


First Try

by Lucillia



Series: First Try [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:29:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucillia/pseuds/Lucillia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he is tested on something other than his weak spot, Naruto ends up graduating from Konoha's Ninja Academy on his first try and serves on another team until Kakashi poaches him from his sensei.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Lucky Pass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Due to a bit of bad luck for one of the Instructors, Naruto's first attempt at the Academy Graduation Exam goes differently.

Uzumaki Naruto shook so hard he was practically vibrating as he approached the room in which the graduation exam was going to be taking place that day. The cheerful look that usually adorned the ten year-old boy's face was replaced by an expression of fear and nervousness. As he walked down it, the short hallway that led to the room seemed to go on forever like in a nightmare. He was about to take the Academy Graduation Exam two years early and, he wasn't sure he was ready. Iruka-sensei had apparently thought otherwise, or he wouldn't have signed him up for it.

Umino Iruka was different from all of his other instructors he'd had since he'd started attending the Academy when he was nearly seven. He had been like the others in the beginning, back when he had first shown up over a year ago but, he had changed. Instead of ignoring him or sending him to stand out in the hallway with that cold look in his eyes, Iruka acknowledged his existence and actually tried to teach him.

Since Iruka-sensei had believed in him, he was going to do his best to not let him down Dattebayo!

With that firm goal in mind, he conquered his fear and strode into a room full of people who were two years older than him...

* * *

One floor below, Umino Iruka took roll. Upon not seeing a familiar head of blond hair above an atrocious orange and blue jumpsuit, his first thought was that Naruto had skipped again, and that he'd have to go and fetch him during the first break. Then, he remembered. Naruto had signed up to take the graduation exam early despite the fact that he wasn't ready. Though he knew that the young fool was going to fail, he silently wished the boy luck.

* * *

On the floor above Iruka's class, which was engaged in a history lesson, Naruto had reached the point where his right leg started bouncing up and down as his pencil rapidly twirled in his hand as he tried to finish the difficult test that had been placed before him. This was a nervous habit of his that Iruka-sensei often called him on since shinobi shouldn't have nervous tics because they could give them away. Despite his best efforts to get rid of any nervous tics he might have, he had them nonetheless.

It was mid-way through the written test, he was stuck on some stupid question he had absolutely no idea how to answer, and time was quickly running out. He sucked at taking tests at the best of times, and this wasn't the best of times, especially since the test on the desk in front of him was harder than any he'd taken before.

What had Iruka-sensei said to do in such a situation?

Oh yeah, skip that question and go on to the next one. Once I'm done with the ones I can answer, go back to the ones I couldn't and try again.

He moved down to the next question.

He could answer this one!

With hope restored, he immediately got back to work, and his leg stopped twitching, and his pencil stopped twirling because it was too busy being used to write down an answer.

* * *

As Naruto furiously wrote down all the answers he knew in hopes of being able to finish his test in time, Iruka sighed as Takahashi made another bid for Naruto's spot as class troublemaker since Naruto wasn't present. Fortunately, Takahashi's prank wasn't nearly as disruptive or destructive as the ones Naruto had a tendency to pull. The stinkbomb incident was probably going to go down in Academy history, as that had been the primary reason the windows had to be replaced with ones that could open.

After disciplining the boy, he went back to his lesson.

* * *

As his class was heading out to break, Naruto was standing in Academy Training Field Five with all of the other potential graduates. His heart was hammering in his chest as he walked towards the instructor who was holding out the weapons he was to use for this portion of the graduation exam. This was it. It was his turn. His make or break moment.

He threw the ten kunai as instructed, silently praying as he did so. Eight of them hit the target, and two of the eight had managed to hit the center. After the Kunai had been retrieved, he then threw the ten shuriken he'd been given. Seven hit the target, three hit dead center this time. Miracle of miracles, he had somehow barely scraped a pass in the weapons portion of the test.

Next came Taijutsu. Let's just say that his spar with the instructor who was testing him during this portion of the exam didn't go as expected, and as Naruto exited the ring, he was apologizing profusely to the instructor. He hadn't meant to head butt the man in the face, it had just sorta happened, and with the way the other students were staring at him, he just knew he'd done something wrong.

As the instructor walked away nursing his bloody nose, he thought he heard the man mutter something that sounded like "Bloody Habenero".

* * *

Iruka pulled his store-bought bento out of its supposedly secure hiding place as the children he was being paid to teach filed out for lunch. Since Naruto was away, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have to check his meal for worms or bugs, but found himself checking anyways out of habit. As he quietly ate his meal while grading the homework that his students had handed in that morning, he found himself asking a number of questions such as: Why had he been thinking of Naruto so much today? He couldn't be worried for the boy, could he? He knew that the boy had grown on him a great deal over the past year, but had he grown on him that much?

* * *

Sometimes, as the old proverb about what could happen if a nail goes missing at the wrong time clearly illustrates, the greatest of changes hinge on the smallest of things. The small change that had caused what could arguably be considered the greatest change in one Uzumaki Naruto's life had hinged on the decision of a careless cook at a restaurant.

What happened was that, during the lunch rush, the cook in question had accidentally spilled some peanut sauce on a dish he was preparing. At this point, the cook had had two choices: One, toss out the ruined portion and make some more, causing more work for him and adding to the wait time for the customer. Or two, mix the peanut sauce into the already prepared dish and hope the customer didn't notice, since it was such a small amount. In one world, the cook did the former, irritating the customer who hadn't known why his dish had taken twice as long as usual to prepare. In this one however, the cook did the latter.

While this decision seemed minor on the surface, it wasn't anywhere near so. As it turned out, the customer in question was A) deathly allergic to peanuts, and B) one of the Academy instructors who had been assigned to proctor the Ninjutsu portion of Naruto's graduation exam. The poor man ended up going into anaphylactic shock the instant he'd taken the first bite of his food, and had to be rushed to the hospital. Word soon got to the Academy Administrator who was then forced to scramble for a replacement as the lunch break ended and the graduation test resumed.

* * *

As Hagane Kita filed into the room where the Ninjutsu portion of the test was to take place, he quietly apologized for being late, as he had not known he would be proctoring this exam until someone had raced up to him with an urgent summons while he was eating his lunch. Fortunately, he hadn't missed much, as he had come in during the Us. Ushio Torako had just passed, and Uzumaki Naruto was next. Based on the demon brat's combined scores, he would have to successfully pull off two of the three basic Academy Jutsu to pass. The other two instructors had been in the process of trying to decide which ones the boy would be more likely to fail when he'd arrived. They asked his opinion, and Kita unwittingly tipped the scales in Naruto's favor...

Naruto's heart thundered in his chest as he performed the Henge. He'd just mastered the standard version of it earlier this week but, had been using a version of it for more than a year after he'd created his anti-pervert move, the Oroike Jutsu. After forming the requisite seals, he turned into a near-perfect copy of one of the men seated before him.

"Acceptable." the man said. "Now perform the Kawarimi."

Naruto felt like jumping for joy. They hadn't asked him to do the Bunshin! They hadn't asked him to do the Bunshin! Feeling as if Fate had smiled on him, since he had managed his first successful Kawarimi two nights ago, Naruto happily replaced himself with an empty chair.

"Pass." the instructor said as he lifted one of the precious Hitai-ate off the table and threw it at him.

Naruto stared down at the headband that had represented more than three years of hard work.

He'd...He'd...He'd PASSED!

On his way out the door, he barely took the time to take the paperwork that had practically been thrown at him.

* * *

Iruka honestly didn't know why he was standing out here waiting to provide words of comfort and encouragement to the Kyuubi's vessel, whom he thought had rather stupidly signed up for the Graduation Exam. Sure, the boy had grown on him a bit over the year and a half that he'd known him but, had he really grown on him this much? If so, how had he managed to do so without him even noticing?

All too soon, a yellow and orange blur that was a head shorter than the group that followed behind, intent on reaching the crowd of parents awaiting them, came barreling out of the Academy at what had to be the speed of sound. Apparently, Naruto's failure had affected him even more greatly than he'd thought it would. He'd never seen the boy try to run away from anything that fast before.

"Naruto!" Iruka called, trying to get the boy's attention as the boy raced away from the Academy.

He apparently succeeded because, something that any normal person would be willing to swear was a streak of light banked before it reached the gate that led to the village proper and turned in his direction. Before Iruka could react, something slammed into him, and he found himself on the ground with a very excited Naruto on top of him babbling at ten miles a minute.

He blinked. He could have sworn he saw something silver and blue on the ten year-old boy's forehead. No...He couldn't have...He blinked again. It was still there. He wasn't seeing things.

"Naruto, you..." he started, at a loss for words.

"PASSED!" Naruto yelled in excitement, causing his previous babble, which he'd let go in one ear and out the other, to finally come into focus in his mind.

"THANKS FOR BELIEVING IN ME IRUKA-SENSEI!" Naruto yelled before enthusiastically hugging him again.

He felt like an utter heel in that moment. Contrary to what Naruto had somehow come to believe, he hadn't believed in the boy. Not at all. He had honestly believed that Naruto would fail, and had never once entertained the thought that the boy might pass since the moment he'd noticed Naruto's name on the roster of students who were attempting early graduation.

"Let's...Let's go get some ramen to celebrate Naruto." he said.

This time, the first time Iruka took Naruto out for ramen had not been to comfort the boy and tell him there was always next time. This time, it was to celebrate one of Naruto's achievements.


	2. The Hokage's Gamble Pays Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is time for Naruto to join his new team.

Naruto twitched in his seat in the classroom in which his graduation exam had previously taken place in excitement. After an interminable three days of waiting, countless pages of boring paperwork, and having his official photo retaken five times since the Old Man hadn't appreciated his make-up jobs or his costumes, he was finally getting his team. He was so excited at this point that the fact that everyone in the room was a stranger to him, and that all of them were staring at him and whispering barely fazed him. He did flinch each time he caught a "Headbutted Wakane-sensei" though.

Eventually, after what seemed like an interminable wait, a medium sized woman with brown hair, green eyes and unremarkably average features, who was wearing the standard Chunin uniform, walked into the room carrying a clipboard. After a rather boring speech about life as a shinobi being difficult and whatnot, she got down to the good part and started naming the teams.

"Team 5 will be Kamiya Satoshi, Kamizuki Suzume, and Uzumaki Naruto." the teacher called, finally reaching the team he'd been eagerly waiting for, his own.

"Darn it, my family name doesn't match." he muttered after hearing the names of his teammates whom he didn't know from Adam.

"And what pray tell is that supposed to mean?" the woman asked coldly, apparently annoyed by his interruption.

"Well, both of my teammates' family names start with Kami. If I had a name that started with Kami, we could have been called team Kami." Naruto replied.

"Whatever." the instructor muttered before getting back to the team announcements that he'd interrupted. "Team 5, your instructor will be Shimura Tetsuo."

After listing his new team, the woman continued to name teams until it was time to break for lunch. In his excitement over the team assignments that morning, Naruto forgot to pack a lunch, and would therefore have to go hungry, since he knew full well that nobody would share with him. To take his mind off his hunger pangs, he wandered around the groupings of older Genin, trying to figure out which ones were his teammates since they hadn't approached him after they had been released. He also spent this time wondering what his new sensei would be like. He hoped he'd be like Iruka-sensei but, he didn't think he'd be lucky enough to find two teachers that were that nice in his lifetime. It was more likely that his new sensei would be like all the other instructors.

Eventually, the lunch break ended, and everyone filed back into the classroom that was almost identical in every way to Iruka-sensei's except for the fact that it was on a different floor. Soon, the Jounin filed in and started taking their teams. As he scanned the small crowd of Jounin, wondering which would be his new sensei, a brown haired man with deep black eyes, who looked a little like that weird old man with a cane that he sometimes saw wandering around the Hokage Tower, arrived and called for Team 5. As he moved to join him, so did a brown haired girl, and a boy with hair that was a sort of blue green aqua color. After they departed the classroom, they ended up following their new sensei out to the benches where he sometimes saw Sakura-chan eat her lunch.

* * *

"Well played Hokage-sama. Well played." Shimura - no acknowledged relation to that one-eyed bastard who had disowned his father for marrying a foreigner - Tetsuo said as he looked over his new Genin team.

If he failed his darling wife's young cousin because the Demon child was on his team, he would never hear the end of it, and not just from his wife, since he'd married into a rather massive extended family. Therefore, for the sake of marital harmony and continued bedroom privileges as well as continued good relations with the rest of the clan he'd married into, he would have to pass this team, Demon and all. The Hokage had obviously known this little fact when he'd been planning out the teams, and had decided to take advantage of it.

The reason he had decided to take a Genin team after he'd gotten married was because it was relatively low risk. While he hadn't wanted to retire at such a young age, his wife hadn't wanted to be stuck waiting for days or even weeks on end wondering if he would come home safe and sound, or even at all. This had been an acceptable compromise since, by training the next generation of shinobi, he could both be a family man, and remain a ninja. After the choice had been made, his wife had been very happy to learn that he would be staying in the village for the better part of a year before he would be ready to take his team out on any C Ranks.

"Well," he said to his new - but they weren't to know that yet - team. "Aren't you going to introduce yourselves to the newcomers?"

He got blank and confused looks in response to his question from all three of his new students. Part of that was probably because Satoshi and Suzume already knew him from their visits Satoshi's aunt who was his mother-in-law.

"Why don't you go from left to right?" he prompted, pointing at his wife's cousin, indicating that he should start.

"My name is Kamiya Satoshi." his wife's favorite cousin said, kicking off the introductions. "My favorite food is Kitsune Udon. My least favorite food is cooked carrots. My hobbies are reading, and collecting rocks. My goal for the future is to be the best swordsman in Konoha."

"My name is Kamizuki Suzume." Satoshi's teammate said when Satoshi had finished. "My favorite food is Tamagodon. My least favorite food is Tsunamayomaki. My hobbies are flower arranging, and basket weaving. My goal for the future is to open my own dojo."

"My name is Uzumaki Naruto!" the Demon child fairly shouted the instant Suzume was finished.

The boy had been bouncing in place with nervous energy throughout the introductions, and had been fidgeting since he had called his team together and had them follow him out here. The boy had quite likely been nervously fidgeting since long before then as well.

"My favorite food is Ramen! My least favorite food is Belladonna! Yuck!" the boy continued loudly.

**WHAT?!** Belladonna?! What the hell was that creature doing eating belladonna?!

"My hobbies are training and pulling pranks on people! My goal for the future is to become Hokage!" the boy said in a rush, finishing his introduction.

It would seem that the Demon boy was both rambunctious and ambitious. Why he was associating the boy with an early childhood memory of long red hair that he'd repeatedly tried to grab, he didn't know. No matter, it was time for him to pretend to crush his students' little dreams. His wife would have his balls if he really did crush little Satoshi's dreams, and the beautiful blue haired love of his life could be exceedingly vicious when she wanted to be.

"My name is Shimura Tetsuo" he said, starting his own introduction. "My favorite food is Mitarashi Dango. My least favorite food is Iceberg Lettuce. My hobbies are cooking, and collecting stamps. My goal for the future is to live to see my great-grandchildren."

"Before I dismiss you guys," he said before anyone got the idea that it was time for them to leave, as the Uzumaki was clearly itching to do "I must inform you that you didn't exactly pass the Genin Exam. What you passed was a test to weed out the absolutely hopeless candidates, and the real Genin Exam will be taking place tomorrow morning. As many as four of the twelve teams named this year may pass, and as few as zero. Meet me at Training Ground Twelve at 8 am tomorrow if you want to take this test. I will inform you now that chances are, you'll fail."

As soon as he finished his little speech, the Demon boy started on some tirade about not backing down but, he tuned the child out as he walked away, feeling the stunned and betrayed looks being directed at his back by his other two students.

* * *

Naruto didn't look half as tired as his new teammates had when he showed up at the specified place and time. He had gone to bed early like Iruka-sensei had once suggested he do after he'd stayed up all night studying before a test and had bombed it spectacularly as a result. It was clear that Iruka-sensei's advice was good because, it had helped him graduate two years early so, he would be doing his best to keep taking it in the future.

He'd ended up getting up before the sun after a nightmare where he missed the test but, he still managed to get more sleep than if he'd stayed up all night worrying about it. After he got up, he'd spent most of his morning skimming over his old textbooks which he hadn't yet turned back in, and wondering what he should bring to the test. In the end, after a great deal of deliberation, he brought all of his weapons and his trap pack as well as a bunch of scrap paper so that any test papers he was given wouldn't be marked down because of his notes.

As he sat down to wait for his new sensei, his teammates, who were standing in the middle of the clearing, started staring at his overstuffed backpack as if they didn't know what to make of it. For some strange reason, they'd only brought their standard equipment pouches with them. Suzume - a brown haired, blue-eyed girl whose favorite color appeared to be green based on her outfit - started giggling. Satoshi - who seemed to be an odd reversal of Suzume since he had blue hair, brown eyes, and was wearing red - started laughing as well.

"Geez Uzumaki. Did you bring a tent too?" Satoshi said when he finally regained control of himself.

"Should I have?" he asked his new sensei who had just come up behind Suzume and Satoshi.

"No." his new sensei, whom he wasn't sure yet whether he should call Shimura-sensei or Tetsuo-sensei, replied.

* * *

Tetsuo had debated with himself long and hard over what his test should be since the greatly lauded "bell test" was traditionally restricted to the Nidaime's teaching line. While he was going to go easy on his wife's cousin and team, he wasn't going to go too easy on them. Their pass after all was going to have to look credible to any outside observers, especially the one-eyed bastard's little minions that kept eyes on him at all times. Eventually, as the time for the test was fast approaching he came up with a plan.

"In order to pass your final test, you have to capture me before 10am. If you fail to catch me, you will fail. The last one to catch me will fail as well. So, you'd better not be last." he said before he vanished into the woods that surrounded the training ground, and picked a spot from which he could covertly observe his students.

The Demon child promptly started unloading his backpack, tossing aside what looked like a ream of paper and what looked like a writing set. He definitely did not like the way Suzume was eying the paper and the ink, considering what had happened during that whole explosive tag debacle. After, grabbing what looked like the standard Academy Trap Pack, the Uzumaki started getting the show on the road.

After an hour and forty-five minutes of dodging his students while avoiding a series of surprisingly well made traps compliments of one Uzumaki Naruto who was, in his opinion, one of those Genin who would have greatly benefited from another year at the Academy, he finally "tripped" over a piece of low strung ninja wire and allowed Satoshi and Suzume to tackle him before he could get up. If having the Demon boy on his team was the price he had to pay to maintain bedroom privileges in his home and dining table privileges at his mother-in-law's, then so be it.

He wasn't entirely sure how to deal with the flying tackle hug he'd gotten from the Demon boy when he'd told his team that he was proud of them for passing though. That, and the fact that Satoshi had taken the opportunity to steal his wallet while he was on the ground. His wife's whole family were a bunch of thieves but, Satoshi was looking like he could turn out to be trouble later on.

* * *

Danzo had been in the Hokage's office making another request for the vessel when The Boy walked in. The Boy looked a great deal like the whore his son had married and, as he'd learned the hard way years ago, acted like her too.

"Team 5 passed." The Boy said as he stood in front of the Hokage's desk to give his report.

"Remind me again, who is on team 5?" Sarutobi asked, his lips quirking upward in something approaching a smirk.

Damn that Sarutobi. He knew the reason why his old rival was smirking, and he didn't need to have it rubbed in, especially in front of The Boy. The man had spent years attempting to needle him, and giving the Weapon to the whore's son was a perfect jab. He refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing him react however.

"Kamiya Satoshi, Kamizuki Suzume, and Uzumaki Naruto." The Boy replied to Sarutobi's question, sounding somewhat confused as to why he was being asked.

After The Boy had responded to Sarutobi's question, he rather coolly took his leave of his old friend, who had been sitting in the Hokage's seat for far too long, and departed.

* * *

"Damn, he's really pissed." Tetsuo muttered, snickering as he watched the bastard who'd sired his father leave. "I'd like to find out what got stuck in his craw and give him another taste of it."

"I haven't seen him that upset since young Uzumaki Kushina spilled a pot of hot coffee in his lap during her first Jounin evaluation." The Hokage said smiling, apparently just as amused as he was by Danzo's departure. "By the way, how did Naruto do during the test?"

"Surprisingly well actually. His traps are quite good for a Genin but, he needs work in just about every other area though." he replied, his mood dropping as he remembered how the Hokage had out-maneuvered him before he'd even realized he was playing.

It wouldn't do to admit he'd passed someone who wasn't quite ready just because he wanted the missus's cousin to pass, so that was really the only answer he could give. He would quite likely have his work cut out for him in the coming weeks and months, but that was the price one had to pay in order not to upset the missus and the in-laws.

"Good." The Hokage said, smiling, appearing for all intents and purposes happy to have heard that. "Now that he's on your team, I can put Danzo's weekly requests for the boy where they belong."

He barely choked back his laughter as he watched the Hokage neatly chuck a scroll into a nearby wastebasket, and barely managed to keep himself under control as he was dismissed. As soon as he left the Hokage's office though, he had started laughing his ass off. Today was a very good day. He'd managed to stay on his wife's good side. He'd heard a hilarious story that would stay with him for the rest of his life, and he'd apparently gotten something the old one-eyed bastard had wanted for years. All that and it wasn't even noon yet.

It would seem that there was at least one benefit to having the Demon child on his team.


	3. Sasuke's Delusions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke refuses to believe that Naruto could've possibly graduated before him.

Naruto breathed in the crisp Autumn air as he made his way to Team 5's assigned meeting place to attend his first real meeting with his new Genin team. Normally, he'd be running wild on such a day since it was Winter Break but, not today. Today, he was a ninja, which meant that he couldn't run wild and free until January like he used to. He would be taking real ninja missions instead.

The Ninja Academy had two class rotations, the Spring rotation who got out for break from the end of April to about mid-July, and the Autumn rotation whose break was from the end of October to about mid-January. He'd been in the Autumn rotation, and since he'd turned ten before the start of the Winter Break this year, he had just barely qualified to take the early graduation option under the new laws, AND HE HAD PASSED! Because he had passed, he was a real ninja,with a real ninja team who didn't have time to run wild through the village pulling pranks.

All too soon, he was standing next to his two new teammates, whom he'd mentally dubbed the Kami twins because of their family names, and waiting for his new sensei, whom he'd decided to call Tetsuo-sensei since he had proven to be nice, and even said that he was proud of him! Tetsuo-sensei wasn't quite as nice as Iruka-sensei but, still...Almost nobody was as nice as Iruka-sensei, who'd been happy to learn that he'd also passed his final graduation test and got on a Genin team for real.

"Why are you wearing that?" Satoshi, who had to be coordinating his outfits with Suzume or something since he was wearing black to her blue, asked, pointing to the over-sized orange track suit he'd gotten a few months ago when he'd finally outgrown his favorite orange hoodie.

He missed that hoodie but, damn, this track suit was awesome, and the coat it came with was really warm. The fact that it was too big had allowed him to make a few daring escapes he wouldn't have otherwise managed when the idiots chasing him had grabbed him by the back of his jacket. Unlike his hoodie, he could worm his way out of his new jacket with little to no problem.

"Because it's cool, and I like orange." he replied.

"Yes but, it is an entirely too noticeable shade of orange, and therefore absolutely useless when one is engaged in stealthy activities." Tetsuo-sensei said, joining in on the conversation, having just arrived.

Tetsuo-sensei then turned to the team as a whole and said "I will be evaluating your individual skills this morning so I know what I will need to work on in regards to each of you. Then, we will be taking a mission this afternoon."

He whooped as he jumped for joy at this news. A mission, a mission, his first real mission, and he'd be taking it this afternoon! This was what he'd signed up for!

* * *

Tetsuo called the Demon boy last. Suzume and Satoshi were pretty average for new academy graduates. The most surprising thing about them was that Suzume had been better in Taijutsu than Satoshi rather than the other way around but, then again, since her goal was to start a dojo it wasn't too surprising. He'd already known the two of them since before they graduated the academy, as Satoshi was his wife's cousin, and Suzume had been a friend of Satoshi's since they had started the Academy and therefore had been as much of a fixture as Satoshi when he went to visit his mother-in-law, but he hadn't known the full extent of their skills until today. At the moment, he Demon child was really the only unknown quantity on the team, skill and personalitywise.

He'd read the Demon's file last night, hoping to gain further information on him so he'd know where to begin. He really should have read the file before he took the team but, he had been much too busy at the time and had set it aside until last night. When he'd opened the damn thing, it had only been to find that the old One-eyed Bastard had slipped some supplemental material into it before it had been given to him.

According to the birth record that had only partially been filled out, the Demon's mother was a red haired Kunoichi named Kushina whom he'd seen around the village a few times when he was a kid, the very same Kushina who had spilled hot coffee on the one-eyed bastard. There was a birth year and a death date for the father but, there was no other personal information on him, or at least none that the old One-eyed Bastard had been willing to impart. Both of the child's parents died the day of the Kyuubi attack, ironically making the Demon's vessel a Kyuubi orphan. The child's Academy scores were...Well, they were the thing he was most worried about. Frankly, the kid had only been able to barely scrape passes in the last year, and those passes were his best scores. The boy's barely scraped pass during the Graduation Exam had placed him at the absolute bottom of his year's graduating class, as in had he scored one point lower, he would have failed and gotten the extra year or two at the Academy that he seemed to desperately need.

Now, it was time to see with his own eyes just exactly what he'd gotten himself into when he decided he'd do anything to stay off the couch and out of the doghouse. Like he had done with the other two, he ran the Demon child through his paces.

The boy's accuracy with kunai and shuriken was only just barely acceptable. The kid knew almost nothing about Genjutsu. His Taijutsu...Well, if the stories about the headbutting were true, give him a bottle or a chair, and he'd probably beat the crap out of a very surprised Ninja like that old red head he'd once run into in a bar in Wind had done to his Jounin-sensei while he was on his way to his second Chunin Exam. As for his Ninjutsu, his Henge was acceptable, as was his Kawarimi...

"Now do a Bunshin." he ordered the boy.

The child who obviously wasn't a demon, if his abilities were anything to judge by, suddenly went pale. Crap. Seriously? Nonononono...

Eventually, the boy made an attempt at the Bunshin Jutsu, and he found himself staring in amazement as the boy fried the pathetic little Bunshin he'd created with enough Chakra to power several Kage Bunshin. Enough Human Chakra to power several Kage Bunshin.

Yikes! What the hell had he gotten himself into?

* * *

Naruto groaned. His first mission, his first and officially most royally sucky mission so far hadn't had anything to do with stealing awesome treasure or important documents, and absolutely nothing to do with rescuing princesses. Instead of doing something cool like that, he was stuck scraping peeling paint off the side of a house so the new owners could repaint it. It had been hard, tedious, dirty work, and it had taken until nearly dinnertime before the customers were satisfied. It had also made him wonder several times why he'd thought becoming a Ninja was cool, which, incidentally had been one of the intended purposes of D Ranked missions.

The day following that mission marked the start of a new routine for Naruto. In the mornings, he'd meet his team, and they'd have an hour of exercises such as running or gymnastics. Then, they'd have an hour and a half of Taijutsu training, 45 minutes individual and 45 minutes of sparring with teammates. After the Taijutsu training, there would be an hour and a half where Tetsuo-sensei worked on things with his other teammates while he was stuck trying and failing to climb a tree using Chakra. After the individualized training, there would be a one hour lunch break where everyone would eat the lunches they packed. After lunch, it would be off to the Tower to get another sucky mission, and the following afternoons were spent pulling prickly dead weeds from back gardens, painting fences, mending roofs, installing kitchen sinks, babysitting, and other such inane tasks. The more he and his team complained, the worse the mission.

About a week and a half into his new life, Naruto finally ran into one of his former classmates and, of all people, it had been the Uchiha.

_Sometimes,_   _fate really does love me_.he thought when he ran into the boy that day.

He grinned as he passed the Last of the Uchiha who was wandering about the village...Well, he couldn't quite say alone, since there was a pack of fangirls including Sakura-chan trailing about ten feet behind him. But, with the way the boy acted as if none of the girls were there, he may as well have been alone.

As he made his way down the road, he was internally crowing over the fact that he'd done something before the "Great Uchiha" had, and even if the Uchiha turned around and did it ten times better, he'd still done it first. He'd shown him! He'd really shown him! He'd told that jerk a bunch of times that he was better than him, and he had proven it! He was already a Genin, and the teme was still an Academy student. When Sasuke became a ninja, it would be at least a year from now, maybe even two, and he couldn't wait to see the expression on that arrogant ass's face when he finally made Genin and learned exactly what D Ranks were, and that he wouldn't be getting a better mission for at least six months.

The thought of what would happen when Sasuke discovered that his first official mission as a Ninja would be to pull weeds or something like that nearly had him rolling on the ground in hysterics. Before he could do so though, Sasuke finally registered his presence.

"Dobe." Sasuke said upon spotting him. "Why are you wearing that?"

"Wearing what?" he asked as he looked down at the burnt orange jacket and brown pants he was wearing, noting that nothing was out of place.

His sensei had made him get different clothes for missions, and had told him that he could only wear his awesome orange and blue track suit when he was off duty. He was almost never off duty though, which sucked. At least what he was wearing now had some orange in it though.

"That." the Uchiha boy said as he pointed at his forehead.

"Oh, you mean my hitai-ate?" Naruto asked when he finally realized why the jerk was pointing at his forehead. "I'm wearing it because I'm a ninja."

A strange dark and dangerous expression that made Naruto back up a step and reach for his kunai pouch crossed the Uchiha boy's face before it vanished as swiftly as it appeared.

"Yeah right." Sasuke snorted before leaving, clearly dismissing him and his accomplishment. Jerk.

* * *

Sasuke went on his way deciding that Lunch was more important to him than hanging around to watch the Uzumaki boy get what was coming to him for pretending to be a ninja. There was a very good reason that civilians who impersonated shinobi almost never did it twice, and that was because, for those that got caught doing it twice, the punishment was both public, and somewhat gruesome. The punishment one received upon being caught the first time was bad but, nowhere near as bad as the punishment for the second.

He knew for a fact that there was no way in hell that the boy who had been held up by almost every teacher they'd had together as a prime example of an idiot could become a ninja before him. The Academy Instructors would have nominated him for early graduation long before they would the idiot who was nowhere near as talented as he was. He'd already been told by one of the Assistant Instructors that the only reason he hadn't been nominated for early graduation when he was nine like he should have been was due to some sort of political bullshit.

As he made his way to his favorite restaurant, one of the bravest of his pack of fangirls accosted him. It was the pink haired one with the loud voice whose name he could never remember that constantly hung around the Yamanaka. Oh well, it was not like she or whatever her name was mattered or anything.

"Is Naruto really a ninja?" the girl asked, when she finally reached him.

"No." he replied, firmly convinced his answer was true, since there was no way in hell that someone who was near the bottom of the class could surpass him without him noticing.

* * *

Naruto, who had pretty much forgotten his encounter with Sasuke shortly after it had happened, and didn't have time to listen to whatever rumors the Academy students might be spreading amongst themselves, had finally mastered the tree climbing exercise to the point where it was almost second nature to him a month into his training. Wherever he went - if possible - he would walk on walls and fences - any vertical surface really - to try and get in that last bit of improvement, longing for the day that Tetsuo-sensei would finally say that it was acceptable.

So far, all he'd gotten for his efforts was a daily groan and a "I've really got my work cut out for me" from the man. Tetsuo-sensei didn't give him that cold look most adults gave him, and once, while they were at the Administration Complex getting a mission, he'd even patted him on the head. So, he knew that Tetsuo-sensei wasn't just picking on him every time he said it before turning around to focus on Suzume and Satoshi who apparently weren't nearly as much work as he was.

On what had been an ordinary Autumn day until a rather unusual interruption disturbed the peace of his afternoon, he and his team had been doing one of his favorite missions, which was raking leaves. Leaf raking was one of his favorites because, it was one of the few missions during which Tetsuo-sensei would let them goof off a bit. As long as they were willing to do the extra work to clean up the mess they made, Tetsuo-sensei would let them jump into the leaf pile for a few minutes. When Sakura walked by, they had already done so, and had been dealing with the mess they'd created.

"Hi Sakura-chan!" he yelled happily upon spotting her.

Other than that brief glimpse of pink over two weeks before, he hadn't seen Sakura in a month. He would have taken the time to visit her if he could have but, he'd been far too busy with training and missions to do so.

"Naruto!" Sakura growled, upon spotting who had greeted her.

Instead of giving him a brief and somewhat rude greeting before continuing on her way as he'd half expected her to considering how she'd said his name, she stomped over to him, looking more pissed than she had back when he had tried to give her an albino frog he'd found as a White Day present.

"How dare you pretend to be a ninja!" Sakura screamed as she hit him even harder than she had during the frog incident, which had previously set her record for hardest blow, before storming off.

Suzume and Satoshi turned to look at each-other in confusion as she did so.

"What the hell was that all about?" Satoshi asked when he found his voice.

"I have absolutely no idea." he replied before picking up the opening of the bag he'd dropped so Suzume could resume raking some of the last of the season's leaves into it.

* * *

Umino Iruka honestly didn't know where the hell the rumor he'd heard had come from but, somehow, by the time the school break was over and classes resumed in January, Naruto's former class had become convinced that Naruto had dropped out of the Academy and was running around the village pretending to be a ninja. Despite the absolute impossibility of this, the students would not be swayed from their extremely illogical and quite possibly delusional beliefs. The fact that his friend Mizuki wasn't quelling this odd rumor wasn't helping. Oh well, when the brats finally graduated, they'd learn the truth pretty quick, especially if Naruto decided to take offense at their insinuations.

As the day wore on and he started to settle into his teaching routine, he realized that it was pretty quiet without Naruto there to shake things up and keep him on his toes. He was actually starting to miss the boy.


	4. Kage Bunshin Drama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto learns the Kage Bunshin from Kakashi and there is fallout.

Tetsuo had to have been much drunker than he had thought that night, that was the only reason he could think of for why he'd cashed in a hard-won favor for something so stupid and insane the week before. Apparently, Hatake Kakashi the Copy Ninja had been just as drunk or moreso when he'd agreed to the stupid and, as it turned out, exceedingly dangerous plan.

Now, it was a week later and he found himself staring at a field that was completely covered in identical blond children wondering exactly what he'd gotten himself into...

If he thought about it logically, he could guess that the seeds of the idea that had led to this had been planted when he'd noticed that the kid had been putting enough Chakra into the Bunshin Jutsu to power several Kage Bunshin. For three months, he'd tried to correct this little error through Chakra control exercises, all to no avail. Three months of tree climbing, water walking, and leaf floating. Three months and still no Bunshin Jutsu.

Admittedly, there had been some improvement near the end of that three months but, that just meant that instead of putting out the energy for several Kage Bunshin, Naruto had started putting out enough energy for one, which was still way too much, and still fried the Jutsu. Understandably, three months of hard work and virtually no progress was enough to drive a man to drink. Naruto had made significant leaps and bounds in other areas but, still...The Bunshin had become a point of pride for him by this point.

He had popped into his favorite shinobi bar at the end of the day's training the week before only to discover that his fellow Genin Instructors had already beaten him there, as had a not so usual customer, Hatake Kakashi the Copy Ninja. Being a Genin instructor was a stressful occupation that often drove those undertaking it to less than ideal ways of letting off steam after the day's lessons were over. It was a low risk occupation but, a stressful one nonetheless.

While the risk of harm to oneself was virtually nonexistent within the borders of the village, a Jounin who'd been assigned to the task of being the sensei for a team of Genin often had to go to great lengths to keep his or her students from harming themselves. His friend Morishita Kinako, who was the instructor for Team 11, for example had a young Genin on her team who had a tendency to experiment with homemade explosive tags. The fact that the boy had absolutely no talent with seals, and had had several tags blow up in his face had never stopped him. Based on the fact that the back of her vest was singed, he could easily guess that there had been yet another close call recently.

After bypassing the booths that evening, he'd made his way to the bar and seated himself between Morishita, whom he still referred to by family name out of habit despite the fact that he'd known her since they were in the Academy together, and the Copy Ninja. Since the Hatake didn't object either with words or with violence, it didn't seem as if he was looking to score that evening. Getting between a living legend like Kakashi and the woman whose pants he was trying to get into wasn't the way he had wanted to end an already crappy day so, he was relieved that he hadn't done so when he had almost stupidly chosen his seat. Morishita was a friend, former teammate, and someone with whom he could commiserate with about his students.

"Naruto again?" Morishita asked as the bartender arrived with his usual.

"Yep." he replied before taking a sip of his drink.

"Chakra control exercises fail again?" Morishita asked.

"Yep." he replied, taking another sip before asking "Hiro again?"

"Yep." Morishita replied, taking a gulp of her own drink.

The point at which the Copy Ninja had joined the conversation was lost in the general haze of the evening. Eventually, though he would never know why since he was saving it for something big, he'd cashed in on the favor that Kakashi had owed him. How Kakashi owed him that favor was a long story in and of itself. A story that he wasn't willing to share with anybody. Suffice to say that one of his cons had backfired in a way that had somehow miraculously ended up working out in the end.

The next morning, he had wandered out to his team despite the killer hangover he had in order to tell Naruto that he was to meet Hatake Kakashi in order to learn a new jutsu. The yell the boy let out at that moment had been so painful, that he'd almost been tempted not to warn the boy that the man in question would most likely show up more than two hours late. Almost.

The boy had apparently mastered the Kage Bunshin with an almost unheard of swiftness if this little display was anything to judge by. There had to be at least a thousand Kage Bunshin here, and because of that, that irresponsible son of a bitch named Kakashi had alot to answer for. The bastard apparently hadn't warned Naruto about the dangers of summoning too many clones, and the boy could be dying somewhere in the middle of the field, and he wouldn't be able to get to him in time because he couldn't find him.

"Naruto!" he yelled feeling slightly panicked upon suddenly coming to that realization. "Dispel those now!"

A thousand Narutos each grabbed a kunai and moved to dispel themselves.

Oh God, No!

"Not all at..." he started to yell.

POOF Poof. Poof. Poof. Poof.

"...Once!" he'd finished too late.

A dizzy looking Naruto who was standing in the middle of the field sat down. Hard.

"You two." He said to his other two students who had previously been lost in the Autumn colored swarm "Don't even think about trying something like that. Ever."

"And you!" he said, rounding on his third student who was sitting on the ground clutching his head and groaning. "No more Kage Bunshin unless I give you permission."

He then picked up his wayward student and dragged him to the hospital, amazed that the child actually had the strength to even attempt to struggle much less squirm in his grasp as much as he was doing in his feeble attempts to escape. The medics were naturally unhappy to see the child, and he appeared to be just as unhappy to see them but, one of them quickly brought him and the boy into an exam room and looked the boy over.

"It's just a mild case of Chakra Exhaustion." the medic said in a tone of voice that stated clearly that he was very put out at having had his time wasted. "Have him rest for a day or two and he should be fine."

With that, they were dismissed, and he sent Naruto home for the rest of the day, hoping that the doctor hadn't made some sort of mistake and that he wasn't making one either by sending the child home. He ordered the child not to do any more jutsu for good measure, in case the child did something stupid, as he was aware of the fact that Naruto often practiced at home during his free time. As soon as Naruto vanished down a side street, he himself made his way home so he could think.

Just what had he gotten himself into?

* * *

Morishita Kinako sat at her usual seat at the bar when her friend Tetsuo stormed in apparently looking for a fight. He obviously found what he was looking for because, after looking around a bit, he had stomped over to the Copy Nin who was reading his usual trash and nursing a drink that he was taking sips from through his mask. Without warning - if one discounted Tetsuo's belligerent manner - he socked Kakashi in the face. Kakashi responded to this unprovoked attack by pinning Tetsuo against a wall face first.

"What was that about?" the Copy Ninja asked in a tone of voice that stated that he would happily kill the other man if he didn't provide a satisfactory answer.

"You stupid bastard. You were supposed to teach Naruto a Jutsu, not teach him how to kill himself!" Tetsuo yelled.

"Teach him how to kill himself?" the Copy Ninja asked, sounding slightly stunned.

"The little brat nearly killed himself this morning making at least a thousand Kage Bunshin!" Tetsuo yelled as he slipped out of Kakashi's grip, which had slackened, and whirled around to face the man.

A th...a th...

The silence in the bar was broken by the sound of a dozen spraying drinks and two people choking. It took a while for Kinako's own brain to reboot and for her to realize that she'd dropped her own drink in her lap. Tetsuo's student had done a thousand Kage Bunshin and survived. Considering who that student was, it shouldn't have been so surprising but, still...Tetsuo's student had done a thousand Kage Bunshin and survived to tell the tale. At least she was reasonably certain that the kid would be able to tell the tale. Tetsuo would have killed Kakashi if his student's brain had fried, wouldn't he?

Making up her mind, Kinako paid her tab and made her way down to the hospital. Several people who apparently were just as curious as she followed her.

* * *

Nurse Takami sighed before she once again tried to explain to the group that had just arrived exactly why they couldn't visit Naruto. She didn't know why she even tried since they obviously didn't believe her.

"Uzumaki Naruto was in here earlier today with a mild case of Chakra Exhaustion, but it was determined to not be serious enough to require hospitalization, and he was sent home." she said for the fifth time.

"Hey, anyone know where the kid lives?" one of the crowd that had practically stormed the hospital asked.

"I think I do." another member of the crowd said.

And with that, they finally left letting her get back to more important things like tending to patients that weren't the Demon child who'd never required more than a night of hospitalization the few times he'd been brought in.

* * *

Hyuuga Hitoshi - the ancient and venerable Seal Master of the Hyuuga Clan - had absolutely no idea how he'd gotten roped into this mess which could potentially lead to mass executions if somebody made a single misstep. He'd been enjoying a quiet evening in when a member of the Branch House had persuaded him to come here through a number of pleas and bribes. Eventually, after receiving the promise of an extra ration of chocolate for dessert tomorrow, he had finally deigned to come.

The boy whose seal he was currently examining had been nervous when he had seen the crowd outside his door, and had only allowed him and two witnesses in when they had tricked him into believing that he was a doctor and that they were his assistants. The boy was handling things rather well, considering the fact that he'd never been in a situation where he was practically surrounded by a crowd that could easily turn into a mob before. If it were him, he would've been freaking out by now. As it was, the boy was standing there nervously and impatiently as he waited for him to finish his examination.

The seal he'd been asked to examine was an incredible work of art. While some elements were new, the seal itself was reminiscent of the style that the Uzumaki Clan had used for centuries. Not only that but, it was in perfect working order and showed no signs of degradation as some had feared when they'd heard the tale of the boy's extraordinary feat. After he'd finished his final checks on the seal, he rather unnecessarily took the boy's pulse and checked the child's eyes with a small flashlight that one of his "assistants" happened to be carrying, and he and his assistants had left the apartment.

"Well?" the apparent spokesperson for the crowd that had moved outside the apartment building asked the instant he'd stepped outside.

Being careful with his words as some of the crowd were undoubtedly off-duty ANBU, he reassured the the waiting crowd. As it was, they were all very dangerously skirting the edges of the law at the moment and, the instant he opened his mouth, he would be doing so even more so.

"It is functioning as it is meant to." he finally said. "It contains that which it should, and steals and converts small amounts of power from that which is contained to augment the child's own rather formidable stores."

Someone apparently got the message, as somewhere in the middle of the crowd, a man had started laughing his ass off.

"Steals!" the man choked out between laughs. "The kid's been stealing from the...from it for years!"

That apparently broke the tension, as the large group of now laughing shinobi, several of whom were apparently mildly intoxicated, departed.

* * *

Naruto sighed in relief when the crowd around his apartment building departed. He had absolutely no idea why they had been there but, he was certain it hadn't been for anything good. That doctor from that clan of people with the creepy eyes had been weird, and he had seemed to be far more interested in the strange drawing that had always been on his stomach than anything else. The way that his assistants had been staring at him as if they weren't sure what to make of him was strange as well.

Today hadn't really been a good day overall, starting with what he'd thought was a good start but, had turned out not to be. He had decided to show Tetsuo-sensei exactly how many Kage Bunshin he could make, hoping that his teacher be proud of him like he'd been when he'd passed the test that had gotten him on the team but instead, Tetsuo-sensei had gotten upset with him, and dragged him to the hospital. When they left the hospital, Tetsuo-sensei had given him a long lecture on something called Chakra Exhaustion, and how it was very dangerous, and had once again ordered him never to do the Kage Bunshin without his permission before sending him home. After that, he'd spent a rather boring afternoon and evening at home, reading the books Tetsuo-sensei had assigned, before that crowd had shown up and he'd let that weird doctor in.

Deciding that the day had been full enough and, despite the fact that he usually didn't do so for another hour and a half, he dressed for bed. As he was settling under the covers, he heard his window being jimmied open. With his heart pounding in his chest, he quickly grabbed a kunai, hid it under the covers with him, and promptly rolled over and pretended to sleep.

A few minutes after he'd closed his eyes and got his breathing under control, the intruder finally entered through the window. It turned out to be that Kakashi guy who had shown up three hours late when he came to teach him the Kage Bunshin. Afraid of what he might do to him considering the weirdness that had gone on earlier, he quickly leapt up at the man who knocked the kunai out of his hand and pulled him into what was either a basket hold or a tight hug.

"I'm sorry Naruto." Kakashi said as he wrapped his arms around him even more tightly. "I'm so sorry."


	5. Kiri Chunin Exams: Meeting Haku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being a Genin for a year and change, Naruto and his team have been nominated to participate in the Chunin Exams.

Naruto shivered and pulled his coat around him more tightly as the boat made its way towards Water Country. It was late December, and an icy wind howled over the ocean under ominous looking slate gray skies. The Captain of the merchant vessel he and his team had booked aboard said that they would be at the Western Port in three hours. When he'd asked, Tetsuo-sensei had said that Kirigakure was a short hike from said port, no more than ten or fifteen miles. Considering how long some of the hikes Tetsuo-sensei had taken them on over the last year and change since he'd joined the team had been, that was reasonably short. He still had nightmares about that first hundred-mile hike.

After a little over a year of being Genin, his sensei had decided that it was time for him and his team to take the Chunin Exams. He and the Kami twins had apparently improved enough over the last year that Tetsuo-sensei had thought they were ready for a shot at becoming Chunin or, at the very least, ready to see what they would be up against and how far they needed to go before they became Chunin. His only real worry right now was the snow. The Winter Chunin Exams started on the First of January and, if his team made it to the third phase, they would be staying here until sometime mid-February. This meant that if the stories he'd heard about the snow in Water Country were true, he would be seeing an awful lot of it. Since it rarely snowed during the Winter if at all in Fire Country, this would be a new experience for him.

His sensei had advised him to pack snow sandals as well as waterproof clothing and gear before they left, which seemed to confirm the stories he'd heard about the average annual snowfall in Water Country. The snow sandals he'd been forced to purchase for the trip had turned out to be much like his regular sandals, except for the thick waterproof inner lining, and that the tread on the bottom had been specially designed for gaining traction on icy surfaces. That, and they cost about twice as much as an ordinary pair of shinobi sandals. Considering the expense, he'd taken his sensei's advice about clothing and applied it to his new shoes. They were one size too large so he could keep them a little longer while he grew and therefore, his foot had slid around in them a bit until he'd taken care of the problem with a pair of thick woolen socks that Suzume had knitted for him for his eleventh birthday.

His team wasn't the only one from Konoha that was traveling to Kiri for the exams. Along with Team 5, there were six other teams. Most of those teams consisted of Genin that were several years older than him, though there was another team from Suzume and Satoshi's year that was attending. Throughout the journey, the older Genin who traveled with them had mostly kept to themselves, and spent a great deal of time ribbing a gray haired boy named Kabuto for having failed the exam four times already. So, that had meant that he had spent most of the voyage getting to know Suzume and Satoshi's former classmates, and staying out of the way of the older Genin because, the one time he'd gotten in their way, he'd been set to gofer duty.

When he'd stopped by the Academy and told Iruka-Sensei that he was going to be taking the Chunin Exams, Iruka-sensei had told him that he was very proud of him. The evening before he left for Kiri, Iruka had taken him out to ramen, which was a rare treat since, both of them had busy schedules that usually precluded such things. Iruka-sensei hadn't been able to see him off at the village gate like the friends and family of some of the other Genin had because he was on shift at the Mission Assignment Desk. He thought he saw Kakashi there though.

When Iruka-sensei had gone from the Mission Assignment Desk back to teaching after the Winter Break following his graduation from the Academy, he hadn't known when he would see him again, and had been afraid that he wouldnt because, both he and Iruka-sensei were busy with duties whose paths rarely connected, and he no-longer had the free time to hang around the Academy to wait for Iruka-sensei to get off work because he was so busy with training. Shortly after he'd made the thousand Kage Bunshin and worried Tetsuo-sensei sick however, Iruka-sensei had come up to him to smack him on the head and yell at him about how stupid he'd been and how he could have gotten himself killed and how he didn't want him to die. After that, he had made sure to take a little time out his busy schedule to say hi to Iruka-sensei and let him know he was alright, even if he could ill afford to do so.

Iruka-sensei had apparently appreciated the gesture, because he took a little time out of his schedule to say hi to him as well. Being much busier than he was, that wasn't very often though. So he had known better than to expect him to take a huge chunk out of his day to meet him at the village gate. He'd still been somewhat disappointed that he hadn't been able to though.

* * *

Tetsuo watched as his Genin stared at Water's main trading port in wide eyed wonder as the ship finally docked after an almost interminable voyage. He knew something of how the children felt at the moment. His own first Chunin Exam had been in Kiri as well, though that had been in the Summer. Back then, the port had been hot and extremely humid, and he'd barely had the energy to move until they'd started climbing into the mountains and things cooled down a bit. During the Exams, he and his team had been disqualified at the end of the second phase when they had turned up with Morishita badly injured and in need of hospitalization. He still remembered the fear over whether Morishita would live or die during those few days she had spent in the ICU, and the bitter taste of defeat when he came home still a Genin despite the fact that he had sworn to his friends and family that he would return as a Chunin.

His students had improved greatly over the past year, and Naruto most of all. While the boy had maintained a great deal of unpredictability in his Taijutsu, he no longer looked like he was trying to win a bar fight. His ninjutsu arsenal had expanded to include a couple of Wind jutsu he was surprisingly proficient at but, he still couldn't do a basic Bunshin which irked the hell out of him. As for Genjutsu...Well, the boy could recognize them now.

The one area in which Naruto had come to excell however was traps. Give the kid a bit of ninja wire and a couple of explosive tags and he'll make you a nearly inescapable death trap. He'd learned that the hard way when he'd wandered into Naruto's training area and had found himself upside-down with a half second before a tag blew up in his face. Considering how deadly he was with ordinary traps, he was going to wait a while before starting that kid on seals, if Suzume hadn't done so already.

* * *

Sandaime Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen sat doing paperwork in the Missions Assignment office between handing out missions. As he watched, he noticed that one of the Chunin at the desk didn't seem to be entirely focused on his work. During the Winter Break and the brief Summer Break the Autumn Cycle students were given to break up the monotony of the school year, and two afternoons a week, one Umino Iruka usually could be found whiling away what would otherwise be empty hours at the Missions Assignment desk. Personally, he thought that the young man worked a little too hard but, since he didn't appear to be approaching burnout as he had been when he had requested a transfer from field duty to teaching after a particularly disastrous mission, he allowed it.

Today, young Iruka seemed unusually distracted, and he could easily guess why. He had known he'd done the right thing when he'd made him him Naruto's teacher when the boy was eight, and Iruka's behavior now just further confirmed that his decision had been the right one. The young man had refused to open up to the boy at first, deciding to ignore him rather than deal with his presence but, he had eventually done so after some advice from Kakashi and the occurrence of a certain incident, and eventually warmed up to the child, slowly going from teacher to friend and mentor.

"They should be arriving in Kiri sometime soon, shouldn't they?" he asked young Iruka rhetorically.

Based on the young Umino's reaction, he had indeed hit the nail on the head. Smiling, he silently wished the Yondaime's son good luck as he got back to his own work.

* * *

Naruto once again silently thanked Tetsuo-sensei for floating him a loan so he could get his totally awesome brown and orange parka without going hungry. Sure, he was going to be having to take a few extra D-Ranks over the next few months after the Exams to pay for it and the other winter clothing he'd been forced to purchase for the trip but, it would be worth it, especially considering how warm the coat was keeping him on this effing miserable hike. When Tetsuo-sensei had said that it would be only about ten miles or so, he'd neglected to mention that most of it would be uphill, and that some parts of it would be almost entirely vertical, as Kiri was surrounded by a mountain range that ran along the western half of Water.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, a mist shrouded valley came into view. As they descended into the valley, buildings just started to become visible. Unlike the buildings of Konoha which came in a variety of shapes, almost all of these buildings were round, and many of them rose from the uneven valley floor like cylindrical columns. None of the buildings were as grand as the Mizukage's Tower from which the maze of bridges and walkways that connected the sections of valley to each-other originated however. The Mizukage's Tower was one of the most amazing things Naruto had ever seen.

Eventually, after going over several switchbacks and crossing a couple of gorges, the group had arrived at their assigned check-in point where they handed in a bunch of paperwork and were given several forms to fill out and give to the exam proctors on the First of January and an information packet in return. From there, they had made their way over another series of bridges until they'd reached the quarters that had been reserved for visiting shinobi.

He knew that he should have felt more impressed with the foreign village but, up close, the buildings were starting to look a bit worn, and he could see and hear a number of ragged looking people scampering around in the alleyways. While he'd come to that point in life a few times, knew hunger, and knew what it was like to make the decision between electricity, and therefore heat during the Winter, and food, he'd never reached it. He had met people who had though, and knew to keep an eye out in case any of the few homeless of Konoha had gotten to the point where they were desperate enough to take what little he had that they didn't.

He'd been mugged once when he was little, and it had been a highly unpleasant experience. If the man had just asked nicely, he would have been willing to share with him even though he couldn't afford it at the time but, he hadn't. Seeing as he didn't want to be mugged again, he kept half an eye on the alleyways as he passed.

After he arrived at his assigned room in the Foreigner's Quarters, he set his stuff down and trapped it so nobody could steal it, and set out to explore and hopefully get a bite to eat. While the hike had been rather grueling, he was more hungry than he was tired, unlike his teammates who were just about ready to turn in. It was just a fact of life that he had far more energy than most people and, if he didn't expend it, he tended to get antsy. When he got antsy, he started annoying people. When he started annoying people, they started yelling at him.

After wandering around a bit - remembering to remain in the more populated areas - he decided that he was ready to get something to eat. He was in the mood for ramen - as always - and decided that he wanted to see how the local ramen compared to Ichiraku's. As he was looking around for someone who might give him directions, he spotted a very pretty and friendly looking girl carrying a basket. Friendly looking was good. Friendly usually meant helpful.

Making a decision, he walked over to the girl.

* * *

Haku's heart rose into his throat as he made his way through the streets of Kiri. Even though a couple years had separated him from his last visit, and he was disguised as a girl, he had a paranoid fear that someone would recognize him either from his days wandering these streets, or from his days trailing behind Zabuza-sama before he'd tried and failed to kill the Mizukage. If someone did, that would be very, very bad, as he could be used to gain information on Zabuza-sama if he were captured. He had a message to deliver however, and he wasn't going to let Zabuza-sama down by failing to do so.

In his mind, he knew that wandering around the village should be safe since the increased activity of the Chunin Exams should mask his presence but, he still felt the almost irrational fear that he would fail and let Zabuza-sama down.

"Hi." a blond boy who was wearing a Konoha hitai-ate said as he shyly walked up to him. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could get some ramen around here would you?"

He had been about to completely ignore the boy and continue on his way but, he had sensed that someone was paying more attention to him than they were to the rest of the crowd that hurried by on their business. It would seem that something about either him or his behavior had pinged on what was undoubtedly a retired shinobi's radar, and that could be a serious problem. Now that he'd attracted notice, it wouldn't do to act suspicious and further alert the man who had probably noticed that his hand had made the tiniest of moves toward his hidden supply of senbon as the boy had approached him and, nice helpful little girls who were delivering things to an elderly relative didn't go giving people who were simply asking for directions the cold shoulder. Besides, the boy had just provided him with the perfect escape route if the ramen stand he'd vaguely remembered being on the Eastern edge of town was still there.

"I do." he replied demurely before holding up a basket that contained several odds and ends a bed-ridden person might appreciate, and one note that must never be found. "I am going to deliver this to my aunt but, I would gladly show you the way afterward."

As he headed towards "his aunt's house", the Genin from Konoha trailed after him. He pretty much walked in silence while the Genin who had briefly introduced himself as Naruto chattered at him along the way. As they neared his destination, one of the children who were too inexperienced or too desperate to know not to beg, and especially not to beg in front of foreigners, came out asking for food.

"Stupid kid." Naruto growled.

And, here he'd thought that the boy was nice, if rather loud and constantly jumping from topic to topic with a speed which left him wondering if he should continue to try keeping up or just give up.

While the other boy patted his coat pockets obviously looking for something, he prepared to defend the child who had been too stupid to know better. After a few moments of muttering the names of various shinobi tools that were likely contained in the pockets the boy was patting, the boy paused at one pocket and unzipped it. Preparing for anything from a kunai to an explosive tag, he tensed and got ready to act. The item the boy tossed at the child in front of them however had been completely unexpected. It was an emergency field rations bar. The wrapper on it was intact, and the seal on it indicated that it was both uncontaminated and had never been opened. It was even still within its Best Before: date.

"Throwing things like that is not polite" he said, covering up his catch as he handed the child the rather bland and tasteless food. "If you're going to give it to him, just hand it to him."

The kid in question - a rather filthy specimen of indeterminate gender - took the proffered rations bar and ran off with it before either of them could change their minds.

"Eh, sorry neechan." the other boy said rather sheepishly. "Tetsuo-sensei is constantly telling me I need to work on my manners."

"See that you do." he replied "By the way, why did you call that child stupid?"

"'Cause he's still out here instead of at the orphanage." the other boy said matter-of-factly. "I would've returned long before I got that bad back when I was still living at the orphanage. The longest I stayed out before I went crawling back was four days."

"He doesn't live at an orphanage." he said, remembering the days back when he'd been just like that child, wandering the streets and scrabbling through the trash searching for scraps.

Before Zabuza found him and gave him a purpose, he would have been glad for an orphanage to take him in back then. Were things in Konoha really so good that an orphanage - which meant a roof over one's head and food - was the worst thing a child could expect to experience?

"You mean his parents...?" the other boy started, looking absolutely horrified.

"I don't think he has any parents either." he replied sadly, forcefully pushing the memory of what had happened to his own parents out of his mind.

"But where...how...?" the other boy said, apparently at a loss for words, before going silent and starting to think.

"Oh yeah, different country, different rules." the other boy muttered darkly when he finally thought things through.

"Indeed." he replied, wondering what it would have been like to grow up in Konoha.

* * *

Author's Note: I have decided that the Naruto Shippuden Episodes 176-178 will be the history of Naruto and Iruka's meeting/early days with a few minor alterations here and there. I've also pushed it back a year or so to a point that is several months after the massacre, since Naruto and co. appear to be 9 or 10 in those episodes, and are at the very least 9 since Kiba already had Akamaru.


	6. Kiri Chunin Exams: Getting Ramen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being Genin for a year and change, Naruto and his team have been nominated to participate in the Chunin Exams.

Naruto had been in an introspective mood as he waited for the pretty girl who was going to give him directions to the ramen stand to get done visiting her aunt. What would it have been like to live here? Would he have survived? At least in Konoha, he'd had the guarantee of the orphanage up until he'd graduated from the Academy.

In Konoha, if a child ended up on the streets for one reason or another, he or she was brought to the orphanage. Many children would run away from the orphanage afterward because they disliked it but, they always returned, either having been dragged back by the Uchiha before they had died out, or having come back on their own because they were cold, tired, and hungry and had nowhere else to go. He himself had been dragged back to the orphanage by the Uchiha several times before the Old Man had given him his own apartment when he enrolled at the Academy.

There was something about this place that made him wonder if living here wouldn't have been half bad though. It had taken him a while to realize what it was but, he'd eventually spotted it and wondered about it. None of the people here gave him that look that most of the people in Konoha did. A large number of the shinobi back home had grown friendlier towards him after he'd made Genin but, almost all of the civilian adults still looked at him that way. Here however, people didn't whisper condescendingly about him as he passed. Here, the people's eyes flicked over him while they went about their business, not particularly noticing him but, not determinedly ignoring him either. Here, the only thing that seemed to draw a second glance was his Hitai-ate. Here however, children starved in the streets, and didn't have anywhere to go to. Not even a measly orphanage.

"Well, well, well, what have we here?" a voice said, cutting through his musings on life in Kiri versus life in Konoha.

He turned to the source of the voice only to find a pair of shinobi standing in front of him, having snuck up on him while he had been lost in his thoughts. The pair of them were Jounin from the looks of them. One was tall with a more slender and flexible build, and the other was shorter and more stocky. He didn't size them up any further than that in case they thought he was looking for a fight. There was no way in hell he was going to fight a pair of Jounin on their home turf, even with the two hundred Kage Bunshin that Tetsuo-sensei had determined it was safe for him to use after careful experimentation.

"So, what are you doing here shrimp? You're a bit far from the Foreigner's Quarters." the tall one asked with a slightly predatory grin, the sort of smile that made really small children cry and wet themselves.

"You didn't get lost did you?" the other one asked, giving him a similar grin.

"I'm waiting for the pretty girl to get done visiting her aunt. She told me that she'd show me where the ramen stand is." he replied, very determinedly not showing fear, as that could very well end up being the last mistake he would make.

"Ramen stand?" the stocky one asked, apparently drawing a blank before recognition dawned. "Why would you want to go there?"

"Ramen's my favorite food, and I want to see how the ramen here compares to the ramen in Konoha." he replied honestly, since lying could also end up being his last mistake, depending on the mood the Kiri ninja were in.

"Eh, you'd be better off going to Kaede's Takoyaki stand kid." the taller one said.

"Either way, you'd better be quick about it kid, you don't want to be caught out here after curfew." the shorter one said "And, don't let us catch you wandering around the residential districts again."

He slumped in relief when the pair of ninja departed. Apparently, they had been the local police, and he was being let off with a warning. Eventually, as he began to worry that he just might get caught out after curfew, the pretty girl finished visiting her aunt. It was about damn time too. He was hungry!

* * *

Haku sighed in relief as he left the house. His message had been delivered. Well, technically it had been given to the person who would pass it on to its intended recipient, but for all intents and purposes, it had been delivered and his part was done. Should he be captured now, his captors wouldn't find anything on him, not even his senbon. He'd hidden those under a couch cushion when he'd looked out the window and seen the a pair shinobi interrogating the Konoha shinobi who had latched onto him. Unlike the naive Genin, he wasn't entirely certain that the two men had left as they had appeared to have done.

He felt naked going unarmed as he was, but it was necessary.

Silently praying that the ramen stand hadn't gone out of business while he was gone, since the proprietor had been nearing retirement, he returned to the Konoha Genin and led him to where he remembered it being. Fortunately, the stand in question was both still in business and open, though it didn't look like the owner had seen too many customers recently, as he was leaning against the counter reading a book. The old man ended up dropping his book in shock when the Konoha Genin took a seat one on of the worn stools in front of the counter.

"Hey neechan." the boy called over to him as he was about to turn away and head out of the village. "Do you want some ramen? My treat."

He stood there torn. He really should be leaving but, he'd also learned to never turn down a free meal. You never knew when you would eat again.

"Okay." he eventually said as he seated himself next to the blond boy.

"So, neechan." the boy said after he'd made his order. "What's your name? I think I missed it earlier."

"Haku." he replied, deciding to go with the truth since he wasn't sure how good the boy was at determining if he was lying or not, and being caught in a lie would cause trouble he didn't need right now.

"Hmm. Odd name but, then again who am I to talk about odd names." the boy said.

"I'm going to have to ask you why, because I've forgotten yours." he said, somewhat embarrassed that that had actually been the case as he had expended more brain power on sorting through the boy's babble earlier in search of information that might be important to him, and the boy's name had slipped his mind.

"Uzumaki Naruto!" the boy said loudly. "I'm going to be the Hokage someday!"

"Really?" he asked, trying not to laugh at the thought of the loud boy leading a shinobi village. "You must be very strong."

The boy who couldn't have been older than ten puffed up with pride at that statement. Had he ever been that young? He couldn't remember, despite the fact that he was only a couple weeks shy of being fourteen.

"Tell me." He found himself asking, almost fearing the answer that would come from a child who hadn't known true pain and true hunger, a child who hadn't known what it was like to live as an outcast. "Do you have someone precious to you? Someone that you would do anything to protect?"

* * *

Naruto paused as he thought about the answer to the pretty girl's question. Would he do Anything to protect the people who were precious to him? Who was precious to him? Well, there was the Old Man Hokage for one. Iruka-sensei had believed in him when nobody else did, and even took him out to ramen sometimes. There was also Tetso-sensei who had taught him, and worried about him, and told him he was proud of him. There were his teammates who were nice to him, and had tried taking him home with them which was nice, even though their parents ended up chasing him off. Maybe even that Kakashi guy since he had taught him that neat jutsu, even if Tetsuo-sensei had said he'd done it very irresponsibly, but he apologized afterward and tried to teach him a few other things later, so it was okay.

Wow. When did he get so many precious people?

"Hmm." he replied. "I do have people who are precious to me, and I'd do just about anything to protect them, maybe even die like my parents did."

"Your parents?" Haku asked.

"They died protecting me from the Kyuubi." he replied. Old Man Hokage had once told him that when he'd asked about them.

Haku looked sad to hear that. Eventually, their order arrived, and they were distracted by the food which broke the slightly dark mood. After a cry of "Itadakimasu", he took an experimental bite of the foreign ramen. Well, it was ramen. That was about all he could say about it. It wasn't undercooked, burned, underseasoned, or oversalted or anything, it just wasn't memorable like the ramen at Ichiraku was.

All too soon, the meal was over and Haku was on her way home. If he didn't have a sense of direction that allowed him to find his way back after he'd been somewhere, he'd have been screwed. As it was, he'd barely made it back in time for curfew.

Over the next week, as he awaited the start of the Chunin Exams, he went to the Takoyaki stand that the Jounin had recommended and back to the ramen stand twice. After all, ramen is ramen and he could never get enough of the stuff. The evidence of that was in the amount of cup ramen he'd managed to pack away in the storage scroll that Suzume had loaned him until he could make his own.

* * *

"So?" a gray haired man in a Jounin uniform asked the two men who had just arrived in his office.

"Apparently, our target slipped the noose while we were focused on the more obvious suspect that had been hanging around." The tall thin man Naruto had met a week before said. "We followed the kid for the last week just in case. Aside from a young girl that he invited to dinner in exchange for directions to the ramen stand, he has made no efforts to meet people and, the people he does meet on the street apparently by chance all check out. He has returned to Tanaka's ramen stand twice since his initial visit but, that seems to be because he is addicted to ramen, as he has reportedly used the dormitory kettle ten times to heat water for instant ramen."

"There has however been absolutely no sign of the girl he was with during his first visit to Tanaka's stand though." the shorter stocky man said. "This could be merely because she comes from the countryside but, it is likely that she had been our target all along, and that she either used the boy from Konoha as a distraction or that the boy was a fellow co-conspirator. We have not yet found evidence of the latter however."

"And, Kaede's opinion of the boy?" the gray haired man asked.

"Obviously Uzumaki based on bone structure. His overly cheerful demeanor and attention seeking behavior appear to be a defense mechanism formed during early childhood due to neglect, rather than an attempt at distraction. Not likely to suffer from a psychotic break anytime in the near future. Basically harmless, other than the fact that he's been trained as a shinobi." The shorter man reported.

"So, we basically wasted an entire week following some stupid Genin around while the real threat got away?" The gray haired man growled, clearly very unhappy with the report he'd received.

* * *

While the two Jounin from Kiri were giving their report, Haku rejoined Zabuza, never knowing that, due to his chance meeting with Naruto, he'd avoided a rather harrowing ordeal during which he would have spent a significant portion of the Winter hiding in the mountains of Water constantly checking behind him before he finally felt safe enough to rejoin his master. Instead, the worst he'd suffered on his journey had been a great deal of anxiety and a bowl of mediocre ramen.

* * *

A certain bar in Konoha was louder than usual that evening. In fact, it was practically hopping. It hadn't quite reached the point where it was standing room only yet however, though it looked to be getting there soon. Despite the fact that the bar had never hired any bands or purchased any karaoke equipment or hosted an open mike night to attract customers, this periodically happened at a rate of about once every six months. The reason for that was because it had become tradition for it to be this way on the night before the official start to the Chunin Exams since the brain-child of the bar's owner had been started some time after the bar that was almost exclusively frequented by shinobi had opened twenty years ago.

As the time to the one event the bar held ticked closer, more and more shinobi poured in through the door. At five to eight, the door to the bar was closed, and the bartender stopped serving drinks.

"The Betting Pool for the Winter Chunin Exams is now officially open!" The bartender called at eight p.m. precisely as he unveiled a certain board on the back wall that was usually covered in felt and had advertisements, community announcements and notices of missing items pinned to it. The chalk board beneath the felt had a grid on it with five wide spaces marked Teams and Individuals, 1st Phase, 2nd Phase, 3rd Phase, and Chunin running horizontally across the top. Vertically, there was just enough room for up to ten teams and thirty individuals to be posted on it.

As the crowd watched, the Bartender wrote up the names of the seven teams currently competing in the exams as well as the names of the individual members of said teams. Once the list was complete, he called for the crowd to place their bets.

"My money's on the Yakushi kid!" one particularly drunken customer yelled.

"Why?" someone asked. "He's failed four times."

"That means that I'll make a killing when he finally passes!" the drunk roared back.

"I'm putting money on the little thief!" someone else called as the crowd surged towards the bar.

There was a general roar of approval at this. The kid was only eleven but, the odds of him passing were good. Uzumaki Naruto was no Hatake Kakashi but, it was clear that he was well on his way to becoming one of the elite. There were several more bets for the "Little Thief", as Uzumaki Naruto had come to be known in certain circles, that evening.

* * *

In the Jounin's quarters in Kiri, something similar was happening. While it was officially frowned upon, and had been declared illegal after one team that had been favored to pass had actually threw the test at the behest of their sensei decades ago, betting on the Chunin Exams was a tradition as old as the Exams themselves. Jounin from just about every country were quietly passing ryo to the unofficial cashier and receiving betting slips disguised as book store receipts in return.

When the door to the room opened to reveal two of the shinobi tasked with patrolling the "guest" quarters, everyone quickly tried to hide what they were doing.

"Everyone cut that out, and don't let us catch you at it again." one of the men said mock-sternly before turning to leave.

"And, a hundred ryo on Kiri's Team Four passing the first phase and failing the second." the second man said, as he tossed the requisite sum of money over to the cashier before turning to follow his companion.

* * *

Tobi watched the Kyuubi Jinchuriki who looked so much like his mother despite his blond hair and blue eyes sleep. The fact that he hadn't cared for Kushina all that much back when she was alive made things easier for him when it came to Naruto. Turning against his former sensei had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done in his entire life. Turning against the clan and the village that had constantly put him down however, not so much.

He honestly hadn't expected to run into Naruto here, especially since he would be leaving Kiri soon because Yagura had outlived his usefulness. It was about time he got back to Madara's timetable and took a more active role in the Akatsuki, even if he didn't like most of the members that Pein had selected, and wouldn't have associated with them if he'd been given any choice in the matter.

While the Kyuubi Jinchuriki was a tempting target at the moment, now was not the right time to take him. He didn't have anything prepared, and the boy's disappearance would have just about everyone up in arms at the moment, especially if he vanished on foreign soil. A war between Konoha and Kiri that he or Madara hadn't planned to the last detail was the last thing he wanted right now.

The child seemed peaceful, unaware, just as he had been when death had nearly taken him in the first moments of his life. Right now, he could just open the boy's window and waltz into the child's room without him being any the wiser.

After watching his sensei's son just lay there as if he weren't in mortal danger for a while, the temptation became too much. It wasn't as if he was planning on harming or kidnapping the boy whom he would have to take eventually in order for Madara's plan to work, he was just going to be leaving a warning the brat would never forget...

He went to the window and began to jimmy it open.

SNAP! POP!

Interesting. Interesting and painful. He hadn't seen one of those in a while, and most definitely had not expected to see one here, considering where he'd found it. It seemed that someone else had actually read that dusty old book on traps he'd found misfiled on some back shelf of Konoha's ninja library. Someone who had actually managed to get the damn thing to work without accidentally electrocuting themselves.


	7. Kiri Chunin Exams: An Explosive Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being Genin for a year and change, Naruto and his team have been nominated to participate in the Chunin Exams.

Naruto stared down at the paper on the desk before him trying to think. The stress of the situation he was in was making that difficult however. He still had fifty-five minutes left out of the hour he'd been given but, he was all too aware of how quickly that time was ticking down towards zero, which added to the pressure he was under. He usually did very well when he was under stress but, there were times when said stress would hinder him rather than help him by shorting out his thought processes before he could get one of his brilliant ideas. That usually happened when he was taking a written test, such as the one he was taking now.

At the moment, he was seated in a room where the first test of the Chunin Exams, a rather unusual test, was taking place. Other than the almost debilitating case of nerves he was suffering through, getting here had been relatively trouble free. There'd been some older Genin in the hall who'd tried to chase them and a crowd of others off but, he'd dealt with that. One of those Genin was going to have a better appreciation for low-yield, mostly non-lethal, explosive tags in the future. Those things wouldn't kill you, but they sure as hell hurt when you got hit with them.

When he and his team finally arrived after pressing through a large crowds, their sensei had been waiting outside the room, which seemed to be the Kiri Ninja Academy's auditorium, hoping to give them some last minute advice before they entered. Once inside, he'd followed his teammates' lead and handed the requisite paperwork over to the exam proctors and had received this test in return.

This test...

He was supposed to write down the personal information of five people in the room who weren't his teammates and, he'd been given an hour in which to do it. If he tried to do something stupidly obvious like try to ask the people in question, he and his team would be disqualified. If he was caught gathering the information he needed by the eagle-eyed proctors three times, he and his team would be disqualified. Considering those limitations, how the hell was he supposed to do this?

Maybe it was like a puzzle. What had Iruka-sensei told him to do when dealing with puzzles? Oh yeah, look at things logically. First, he was supposed to gather the information of five people in the room who weren't his teammates. There had to be a way for it to be possible, otherwise the test wouldn't have been given, but how? Five people who weren't his teammates...

Well, there was one.

He stopped twirling his pencil and began to write.

Name: Uzumaki Naruto.

Birthdate: October 10...

Fifty-five minutes and a number of failed teams later, one of the proctors of the Exam came over to check his results. Upon seeing the first person listed, he started laughing.

"What's so funny?" one of the proctors called out.

"The kid listed himself first." the proctor replied.

There was a great deal of laughter at this.

"Well, it's technically within the rules, so as long as he's accurately listed four other people, he passes." The Head Examiner said once things had quieted down a bit. "Now that everyone's done laughing at the blond clown, I've got a little surprise for you all..."

* * *

Naruto shivered slightly despite his super-warm parka. The temperature had dropped overnight, and about five inches of snow had fallen sometime since he was woken up early that morning by someone who'd been trying to open his window. Within the Kirigakure city limits, it hadn't been as much of a problem as it was now, as there were covered walkways leading from the Foreigner's Quarters to the Kirigakure Ninja Academy. Leading away from the Academy and towards the starting point of the second phase of the Exam however...He'd been forced to trudge through the freezing white stuff that was trying to soak through his shoes and his pants, as he hadn't yet figured out the right way to use his Chakra to be able to walk on top of it. As he trudged through the snow, he had the distinct feeling that he'd be feeling even more miserable if his snow sandals hadn't come with detachable toe covers.

The second phase of the Exam was being proctored by a very serious looking old guy who had nearly had an apoplectic fit when a team from Suna had decided to have a snowball fight while he was explaining the rules of the second part of the Exam. The rules themselves were simple. Each team was either given a black ball or a white ball and sent into the mountains to make their way to a small town on the other side. In order to pass, you had to make your way to the indicated village within five days. When you got there, you would have to have both a black ball and a white ball, and your team had to be intact with each member able to fight, otherwise you'd be disqualified. The rule that worried him the most however, was that the use of lethal force was allowable.

After listing the rules, the proctor had shown them a map that had the town that was their destination clearly marked on it. As soon as the test began, he was going to be handing Satoshi some paper and drawing supplies. The boy had a near perfect eidetic memory that would work to their advantage in this case.

After the old man put the map away, he and the Kami twins quickly filled out their release forms and handed them in, receiving a black ball in return.

* * *

It was nightfall two days into the second test. Naruto had finally figured out how to do what he referred to as snow walking at the end of the first day. As he walked along with his teammates who had also figured out how to walk on top of the snow through trial and error, the snow sandals had paid for themselves when he'd hit a particularly icy patch on one of the more perilous trails, as had the sprayable - and fortunately washable if one had the correct solution - mountainous region camo he'd used which had helped him escape the notice of Genin from an opposing team. He hoped his parka would be just fine when he removed the stuff, though there was no reason it shouldn't be, as it was used on Chunin and Jounin vests all the time during the Winter and in places where green stuck out like a sore thumb but, still...

His team had run into Suzume and Satoshi's former classmates the previous afternoon. Since they too had a black ball, they had decided to form an alliance, as they had a better chance of succeeding if they worked together. As the day wore on towards evening, something of an informal treaty which stated that if they managed to get a white ball off another team, a member of each team would take turns carrying it until another white ball was acquired had been drawn up. While they were together, the teams would not be fighting each-other unless A) one team tried to run off with the white ball, or B) it was the last day and they had not acquired another white ball.

After the details of their alliance had been hammered out, Kurosaki Hiro, Yamaguchi Yusuke, and Fujiwara Aiko were rather fun to travel with. Fujiwara was good at telling stories, as he had learned through a series of hand signs that had been traded throughout their combined watch the night before. Yamaguchi had quite the sense of humor, and knew jokes that would make even an experienced Jounin blush. Kurosaki had been someone with whom he, and Suzume who'd started him on explosive tags a couple of months before, could discuss the merits of explosive tags, and possible seal alterations on said tags to change the effect. He'd even demonstrated a tag that created green fire when it blew. All in all, it had been a relatively good day as they searched for signs of another team, and awaited ambush by another team should that team find them first instead.

Night was now falling, and they had come upon the perfect place to make camp. In fact, it was a little too perfect. Someone should have claimed it by now, especially considering the fact that some of the older Genin taking the Exams would have been Chunin already if they hadn't previously failed the parts that required the success of the entire team, and were therefore much stronger and faster than a group of Genin that were little more than rookies. If he and his team had found this place earlier, he would have...he would've...

"Yamaguchi! Get back, let me take point!" he yelled as he raced towards the members of the other team who were racing forwards in order to score the best sleeping spots before he and his teammates got a chance to.

He was the team trap specialist for a reason, and that wasn't just because he was good at laying the darn things. He also knew how to avoid and disarm them. That, and if he wasn't killed outright by a trap he failed to disarm, there was a good chance he'd survive. For some reason, he always healed alot faster than his teammates.

Despite the fact that he'd acted as quickly as he could when he'd realized the situation they were in, he was too late. He only had time to knock Kurosaki whom he'd reached first because the boy was trailing slightly behind his teammates down when the trap went off. There was a deafening explosion as something went flying past him. Immediately afterwards, there was agonizing pain in his back as rock chips or something sliced across it. After a couple of seconds that seemed like an eternity, the dust began to settle, and he lifted his head and looked around. Yamaguchi was obviously dead, Fujiwara was trying to breathe but, it didn't sound right, and Kurosaki's back was sliced to ribbons. His teammates were on the ground too, and they appeared to be injured as well. The area surrounding all of them was littered with small shiny bits of metal.

Shrapnel. The bastards who'd set them up had packed their goddamn trap with shrapnel. The bastards who'd set that trap hadn't meant to injure or incapacitate their opponents in order to retrieve their ball, they had deliberately meant to kill them.

As his anger over the death over one of his comrades and the maiming of the others began to build, a pair of older Genin from Iwa appeared from wherever they had taken cover while his and Kurosaki's teams had approached.

"Man that had worked even better than I thought." one of them said as he pulled out a kunai and walked over to Fujiwara. "May as well put this one out of her misery though."

The rage that had been steadily building within him since the explosion grew to be too much. He saw RED!

* * *

Kamiya Satoshi knew that his eidetic memory was both a blessing and a curse, especially in his chosen field. To the day he died, he would never be able to forget what he saw that day, from the moment Naruto realized that they were walking into a perfect ambush to what happened after Naruto had changed.

He had fallen after being hit by several pieces of shrapnel that the blast Yusuke triggered had sent flying. When he had finally regained his senses, two Iwa Genin were standing over Aiko and Naruto...Naruto was growling. His Chakra was swirling around him strangely, hid hands were turning into claws, the strange marks on his face were growing thicker, and his already unusually sharp teeth were turning into fangs. Throughout all of this, he had been putting out a Killing Intent that felt like an almost sentient evil, a Killing Intent that seemed like malevolence personified. As the Killing Intent started reaching an impossible level, an ominous red substance started lacing itself in with his swirling Chakra until it had formed the shape of a fox above him and then settled down around him in a red cloak of flames. With a cry that was equal parts pain and rage, Naruto leapt upon the two Iwa Genin.

As he watched his teammate tear the two Genin apart with his bare hands, all he could think was:  _This is why...this is why Naruto is treated like an outcast...why parents pull their children away from him...why Cousin Tetsuo had been nervous around him in the beginning...This is why._

He didn't exactly know why he called out to Naruto that day. It was probably the stupidest and most dangerous thing he could have done in the situation considering the fact that the boy had gone completely berserk, and probably wouldn't have recognized him. But, at that point, Naruto had been the only one of them capable of moving, and if they didn't get help soon they would die.

The dangerous...animal - since there was no other word for what Naruto had been at that moment - turned from the bodies of the Genin who had ambushed them, and raced over in his direction. All too soon, it was standing over him with a clawed hand raised. When he realized how much shit he was in, he had closed his eyes, waiting for the final blow. It didn't fall. He dared to open his eyes again.

When he'd looked up at Naruto, he noticed that the slit-pupiled red eyes that had held nothing but anger and hatred had cleared, in fact they had begun to change. The fangs had begun to recede, as had the claws, and the strange lines on his teammate's face. Almost magically, the monster that would fuel his nightmares for years to come had turned back into his friend.

* * *

As Tetsuo stood with his comrades, waiting for news of his students, he shivered. A wave of something ominous had washed over Kiri from the direction of the mountains that the Genin had been sent into just moments before. Though it had been a little over eleven years since he last felt it, he recognized it immediately.

Kyuubi.

Something had happened to Naruto's seal. Something major.

Almost as soon as the feeling had hit him, it had faded, then vanished altogether. As he looked towards the mountains, he wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He fervently hoped that the reason the feeling had vanished was because the seal had compensated for whatever had just happened, not for the other reason he could think of. If it were the other reason, that would mean that Naruto was...it would mean that Naruto was dead.

The other Jounin from Konoha had obviously felt and recognized what he had, and were clearly as nervous as he, if not even moreso.

_What the fucking hell just happened?_ one of the Jounin who'd also brought students from Konoha discreetly signed.

_Brat must've taken too much and overloaded the seal_. he replied, giving the man the only scenario he could come up with with the limited amount of information he had that didn't involve Naruto's death.

_Either that, or he's dead_. the Jounin who had the four time loser Kabuto on his team signed.

He didn't want to even consider that possibility. If something had killed Naruto, who had survived having a spear go through one of his lungs when one of the traps he was working on had malfunctioned, then the rest of his team wouldn't have stood a chance. If Naruto were gone, it would mean that...No. He wouldn't even consider it. All the same, he would watch and wait. Watch and wait and pray that his students came out of this safe and alive.


	8. Kiri Chunin Exams: Jinchuriki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being Genin for a year and change, Naruto and his team have been nominated to participate in the Chunin Exams.

Sanbashi Mizuko - who had cursed his parents for giving him that accursed name for more than one reason - couldn't have missed the ominous wave of what felt like Killing Intent that had washed over Kiri if he were in a coma. He immediately knew what it was, since he had felt something similar from the Mizukage before, several times in fact. He'd known the Mizukage since the days back when the man had been a rather nice Rank and File Ninja rather than the despot he'd become after he'd been given the hat. The differences in the feeling between this Killing Intent and that of the Mizukage however indicated that this hadn't been a case of someone seriously pissing Yagura off.

Someone had brought a Jinchuriki to the Chunin Exams.

Despite what an insanely stupid risk that was, and the fact that it could be thought of as an act of war if the leader of the village into which the Jinchurriki had been brought chose to take offense, someone had brought a freaking Jinchuriki to the Chunin Exams.

He briefly took note of the Konoha Jounin's rather unusual reactions as he signaled for his partner. The instant Kampachi joined him, they headed out to see what the damage was. Considering what a Jinchuriki could do, especially when he or she was on a rampage, there most assuredly was damage. The only question was how much, and how much more would be caused when they were forced to deal with a Jinchuriki who had gone completely berzerk.

There was also the question of which of the tailed-beasts they might be dealing with, as each beast had its own set of powers that could add a rather dangerous element to the mix. While it was known which village got what Biju from the Shodai Hokage before the First War, it was possible that some wheeling and dealing as well as some thieving had been done over the intervening decades. There was that, and the fact that unless there was an unavoidable incident, the identities of the Jinchuriki were a closely guarded secret known only to the villages who held them.

As he and his partner Kampachi headed out into the mountains, a number of Chunin and Jounin who were also dreading what they would find joined them. Considering the possible distance that the Jinchuriki and its team could have gone during the two day head start they had been given, it would probably take a couple hours to find it, which would be a couple hours it would spend destroying the countryside, and quite possibly killing any Kiri Genin in its path.

Much to their shock, before they could reach the mountains, the wave of Killing Intent vanished, as suddenly as it had appeared. Damn, because of that, tracking this thing just got alot more difficult, especially if the Jinchuriki in question now had the presence of mind to cover his or her tracks. It seemed that he and his comrades would have to find the trail of destruction the Jinchuriki had caused before he or she had regained control of him or herself and work his way from there.

"You notice the Konoha lot?" Kampachi asked, after poking him to get his attention which had apparently wandered off without him noticing.

"Yeah, they recognized it." he replied. "But, Konoha doesn't have a Biju, so it's probably one of Iwa's whose prior host they ran into during the last war."

"Strange that they don't have any Jinchuriki." Kampachi said. "I mean, their Shodai Hokage was handing the Biju out like party favors, and he didn't keep one for himself?"

"Which one would he keep? He gave the Ichibi and Hachibi to Suna, the Nibi and Nanabi to Kumo, the Yonbi and Gobi to Iwa, and we got the Sanbi and Rokubi, which leaves..." He counted, working out the problem through the process of elimination, and noticing an interesting pattern.

"The Kyuubi. They kept the fucking Kyuubi." Kampachi said, looking stunned.

"Didn't the Yondaime kill it when it went on a rampage a decade ago?" he asked, half remembering a story he'd heard a while back.

"Kill a Biju? Yeah right. The Yellow Flash may have been legendary, but he's not a god." Kampachi replied.

"You think we'll be able to prove it was Konoha that brought the Jinchuriki?" he asked.

"Only if we find the thing." Kampachi replied.

* * *

Naruto had never been more grateful to be able to transform into objects even though he shouldn't have been able to do so than he was now. He couldn't turn into bandages or things like that but, he could make a few of his clones turn into stretchers. He knew that he shouldn't move his companions considering their conditions but, if he didn't move them, they could die. Their injuries had been severe enough to far outstrip his meager First Aid skills and supplies. Suzume was his team's medic thanks to the abilities she'd acquired over time tending to her own training injuries but, she'd been in no shape to help him other than to occasionally give him directions.

After summoning fifteen clones, he had five of them turned into stretchers. After they did, he slowly and carefully placed Suzume, Satoshi, and Kurosaki on their stretchers, trying to be careful not to jostle them too much and aggravate their injuries. As soon as they were ready to go, he had Yamaguchi and Fujiwara placed on the other two stretchers before he covered them with the blankets he'd taken from their supplies. Once that was done, he slowly made his way towards the town that was on the other side of the mountains where they would undoubtedly receive help.

Because of his teammates' and Kurosaki's injuries, his first instinct was to hurry but, if he did so, he knew he would cause more harm than good, so he forced himself to go slow. It was dark, he did not know the terrain, and one jab from a good sharp rock would dispel a stretcher bearer, which was a very bad thing, considering the path that was ahead of him. The path before him was dangerous even in daylight but, it was the only chance his comrades had.

As he worried over his teammates, he and his shadow clones traveled through the night, carefully picking their way through the darkness. As they were traveling through a small forested area sometime near dawn, they encountered a team from Kiri. Fortunately, the trio of Kirigakure Genin had been too surprised by what they saw to attack immediately, allowing Naruto to get a word in edgewise.

"Do you have a medic on your team?" he asked the group of Genin who looked to be about fifteen or so.

He desperately hoped they did. While he'd been able to stop the bleeding and bandage most of the shrapnel wounds his teammates had received, Kurosaki and his teammates weren't looking so good. Satoshi had developed a fever sometime during the night, and it sounded like Suzume was coming down with a cold.

"And if we do?" the person who'd apparently been designated team leader asked.

"I have two black balls that I would be willing to trade for medical services." he replied. "I will also be willing to provide my services as a guard and lookout for as long as my friends receive treatment."

"What's to stop us from taking your balls for ourselves?" the team leader asked arrogantly.

In response to this question, he summoned twenty Kage Bunshin and demonstrated for the boy that they were indeed solid. After that small display of power, the Kiri nin had rather sensibly backed down.

"What's to stop you from taking our ball?" the team leader asked in a slightly more subdued tone of voice.

"The fact that it would be an absolutely pointless gesture on my part." he said, gesturing to his injured teammates.

"Can you keep moving?" the team leader asked.

"Yes." he replied.

He would have to, since a medic could only do so much, and his friends obviously needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible.

"Deal." the team leader said as he held out his hand. "If you slow us down too much though, we'll leave you behind."

After shaking the hand of the leader of the team of Kiri Genin, he pulled out the offered merchandise, hoping that he was doing the right thing, and that his new business partners would not betray him. The team leader examined the black ball he'd handed over, and found it to be acceptable.

"Chiyako, look after them." the team leader said as he stashed the ball in his equipment pouch.

The girl who had been hanging back in a tree, obviously having been on watch while her teammates slept before he arrived, dropped from her perch and moved towards the stretchers. For some strange reason, she moved to the stretcher that contained Yamaguchi first, and pulled back the blanket that was covering him, instead of moving towards his injured comrades. From her startled gasp, he could tell that she'd gotten a good look at what was left of the boy whom she hastily covered back up with the blanket.

He growled in annoyance when she uncovered Fujiwara instead of going over to his teammates. There was another gasp before Fujiwara was hastily re-covered, and after what seemed like an interminable wait, the girl finally started looking at Kurosaki and his teammates. After examining Kurosaki and Suzume, she reached Satoshi.

"There's not much I can do for him." the girl said to him sadly when she finished examining him. "His wounds have become infected. All we really can do now is try to keep his fever down and hope he survives until we make it into town."

* * *

Dochi Iwako woke from her nightmare screaming. She had spent half the night running, until she had become too exhausted to continue. After finding a semi-sheltered spot, she had collapsed and fallen asleep despite the fact that she'd struggled not to.

_How did it come to this?_ she wondered for what had to be the thousandth time.

The plan had been so simple. When her brother's ground squirrel summon had come back and informed them that they were about an hour ahead of a Konoha team that was headed in their direction, they had spent some time discussing what they would do to them when they arrived. It had been her idea to kill them in revenge for a father she had barely remembered. When they had found the perfect spot for an ambush, she had thought that the gods had been smiling upon them.

They hadn't. While she had hung back with the team's ball just in case, her twin brother and her best friend went to deal with the survivors of the trap they'd set, and they never came back. The blond boy who'd realized that there was a trap there had turned into a monster and tore them apart. She had run before the monster could get her too.

As she ran, she remembered one of her grandmother's sayings, a saying she used to ignore like she had all the rest of them, "When you seek revenge, dig two graves, one for your enemy and one for yourself."

* * *

Sanbashi Mizuko had been resting after having run in circles throughout the night when a Chunin had come up to him with a possible location for the "Incident" as it was being called. Despite the fact that he was bordering on exhaustion, he quickly dropped everything and raced to the indicated location with Kampachi following half a second behind. After ten minutes of running, they arrived at what would have been an ideal camping site, if it weren't for the surrounding carnage that is. Fortunately, it hadn't snowed the night before so, he was able to get a clear picture of what had happened.

"One team came in through here. Based on the tread patterns of their shoes, I'd say it was the Iwa team." he said to his companion who wasn't quite as good at tracking as him but, was good for bouncing ideas off of.

After finding somewhere to start, he wandered around the site, being careful not to disturb it because, it was currently their only clue as to the identity of the Jinchuriki. After circling the site once, he was reasonably certain he knew what happened.

"Two teams came through in this direction moving together. Konoha. I recognize the maker's mark on the bottoms of two pair of sandals. One of them is rather good at evading trackers, he almost didn't leave footprints." He said as he pointed another set of tracks.

"Three broke away from the group, no wait, four, near invisible child's size 13 broke away as well, at this point." he said as he reached the start of a set of tracks that had nearly been obliterated by an explosion. "They seem to have moved towards the explosion when it happened."

"Blood pools here, here, here, here, here, and here indicate where the Konoha group fell after the explosion." he said, pointing to six blood pools, one of which was much smaller than the rest.

"Apparently, they were hit by shrapnel." he said as he picked a small metallic object up off the ground.

"Iwa men's size 8 and Iwa men's size 11 arrived on scene shortly after, at which point Konoha Winter Terrain child's size 13 gets up from here, and moves towards them on all fours." he says pointing to the more distinct tracks that led from the relatively tiny blood pool to the shredded corpses, briefly wondering at the odd cyclonic pattern in the snow surrounding that blood pool.

"Size 13 then moves over to Konoha Men's size 5, at which point his tracks turn nearly invisible again." he said as he followed what seemed to be an impossible number of almost invisible tracks which went up a path he barely wants to try in daylight, and would not have dared at night.

The small tracks vanished altogether on a slick icy patch. There was no sign of Size 13 or his companions in the gorge below, so it was safe to assume that he is alive somewhere. Whether he had remained on the path or climbed up or down the side of the cliff is a mystery however.

"And he vanishes entirely over here." he finished, as he pointed at the icy spot on the path.

"So, what happened to the other bodies?" Kampachi asked.

"Sealed in a storage scroll to be brought back for burial most likely." he replied as his mind was turning over the puzzle of the impossible number of tracks that all went in one direction. "Either that, or Size 13 somehow managed to summon about a dozen Kage Bunshin and carried them."

"So, Size 13 is our Jinchuriki then." Kampachi replied.

"Looks like." he replied, as he turned over the information in his mind.

Funny, he would have expected the Jinchuriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox to have caused a great deal more destruction or have left more bodies behind based on the amount of killing intent he'd felt.

"So, we're either looking for a girl with tiny feet or a small boy." Kampachi said.

"Yes." he replied.


	9. Kiri Chunin Exams: Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being Genin for a year and change, Naruto and his team have been nominated to participate in the Chunin exams.

Sato Chiyako nervously watched the blond Konoha boy out of the corner of her eye. There was something seriously off about the boy. When the boy had come to them with his offer yesterday morning, she and the rest of the team had thought that they would be attacked by the "injured" comrades the boy had brought with him. After all, something like that had to be a Genjutsu, right? Even with a freaky bloodline, it wasn't possible for someone to make ten copies of themself, was it?

As it turned out, it had not been a Genjutsu. The boy's companions really had been injured, and two of them were truly dead. While she had seen death before, she had never seen anything quite as gruesome as what had been under the blankets of the completely covered stretchers four of the boy's copies had been carrying. She had thought that the time she had seen a beggar bleeding out in the street after a fight over some scraps would be the worst thing she would ever see, but she had been wrong.

After the bargain for aid had been struck, they had continued on their way, expecting betrayal from the boy at any moment. That betrayal never came. The boy had been as good as his word, even helping to repel a team that had attacked shortly before noon yesterday. When they had stopped for a break after the fight, Hikaru helped the boy seal his dead comrades into a storage scroll so they wouldn't attract predators or stink up the place, since he refused to leave them behind. That evening, when they had finally stopped for the night, the boy laid out a bunch of traps and joined the watch rotation, replacing her since she was needed to tend to his comrades.

The thing that made Chiyako most nervous now wasn't the possibility of betrayal from the boy who had so far kept his word, it was the oddities she'd noticed while he traveled with her team. The first oddity had been the technique he'd been using to multiply himself. The second thing she'd noticed was that, while his clothes were damaged and it looked like he had sustained serious injuries himself, the boy had been completely uninjured when she examined him. There had been marks where such injuries could have been but, those had completely vanished by sundown. The third oddity she'd spotted had been the fact that the boy, if that was what he was, could maintain his multiplication technique for the entire day without dropping from Chakra Exhaustion come nightfall.

Most disturbing of all was Wataru's reaction to the boy. Wataru was a natural Chakra sensor, and whatever he had seen when he'd turned his ability on the boy had left him shaken. Come to think of it, he'd been hanging back when Hikaru had approached the boy when the team had first met him.

She could tell that her teammates were just as nervous and wary of the boy from Konoha as she was if not moreso. Normally, the two of them would have attacked what they would have seen as a threat but, this time they refrained, knowing that the blond boy was only letting them live because they served a purpose. For as long as they served that purpose, the boy's power would be at their disposal to a degree rather than turned against them.

The town that was their target came into sight. That of course was the perfect time for the being which she wasn't entirely sure was human to show its true colors, since he wouldn't be needing them anymore. She had done her absolute best to stabilize his companions with the limited resources she'd had at her disposal but, she had only been marginally successful. The boy that the blond had called Satoshi was barely clinging to life, and his fever had risen to a dangerous degree. The other boy had developed a fever as well, and the girl's cough had gotten steadily worse, to the point where she could barely breathe. As the town got ever closer however, the boy kept doing what he'd been doing all morning, which was walking point while his copies carried his injured companions behind them. The town continued to get closer, and the boy made absolutely no move to attack. Finally, when the tension had become almost unbearable, they reached the town.

Once within the town limits, the boy said "Thank you" before he departed and headed to the medical building with his copies and injured comrades trailing behind him. That was it. "Thank you", and then the child that had haunted her nightmares during what little sleep she had managed to get the night before was gone.

Soon, she and her team were handing their balls over to one of the Exam's proctors, and they had something new to worry about. Namely, the third phase of the Exams.

* * *

Naruto sat in the medical center's waiting room alongside Tetsuo-sensei and a Jounin named Morishita. He had absolutely nothing to do at the moment, and the anxiety and fear for his teammates had faded to a restless boredom and vague sense of worry over the hours since they'd arrived. In the beginning, there had been something of a panicked rush as he'd gotten Kurosaki and his teammates seen to. Then, Tetsuo-sensei and Morishita-san arrived with a couple of the other Jounin sometime during the general flurry as several medics examined and started treating the injured.

Not knowing what else to do with them, he had handed the remaining black ball and the white ball that he'd gotten off the team he'd helped the Kiri team fight off to a Proctor who had arrived with Tetsuo-sensei. As his team was in no condition to fight and wouldn't be in the next twenty-four hours, they were naturally disqualified. He knew that they would be disappointed to hear that when they woke up.

After his comrades had finally been whisked off to treatment rooms, and he'd been pushed into the small, drab waiting room, he had given the scroll with Yamaguchi's and Fujiwara's bodies in it to Tetsuo-sensei since he hadn't known what to do with that either. He didn't know why Tetsuo-sensei had opened the scroll then and there, but he did, and Morishita-san started crying the instant she saw the bodies. Instead of resealing Yamaguchi and Fujiwara into the scroll that the Kiri Genin had given him, Tetsuo-sensei and one of the other Jounin each pulled a black bordered scroll from their vests, and sealed them into those before handing them to Morishita-san who then took them and sat there staring at them and crying for hours. He felt a little like crying himself but, it seemed that all of his tears had dried up somewhere on the journey between where his comrades had died and here.

After Yamaguchi and Fujiwara were resealed in their new scrolls and handed to their sensei, Tetsuo-sensei and the other Jounin senseis started asking him questions about what had happened, and about the Kiri team he'd traveled with. During the interrogation, they asked him a bunch of questions about the fact that he couldn't remember what happened between the Iwa nin killing Fujiwara and him helping Satoshi except for a whole lot of red. Eventually though, they had finally stopped asking him questions after he'd been forced to repeat his answers several times, and he had been left with nothing to do but sit with Tetsuo-sensei and Morishita-san and wait for news about his teammates.

While he was trying to decide whether or not it would be okay to find something to do considering the situation, the two Jounin he had met on his first day in Kiri walked into the room. They barely glanced at him as they passed by him but, as they were about to go through a door into the treatment area, the shorter one stopped.

"Those are about a size 13, aren't they?" The man asked his companion while pointing at his shoes when the man stopped upon realizing that his companion wasn't right behind him.

Both men turned and gave each-other strange looks before they continued on to the treatment area. Not knowing what that was about, he decided to ignore it.

* * *

Morishita Kinako had cried until all her tears were gone, and now, there was nothing left but the wait to learn the fate of her remaining student. It was a cruel and bitter irony that the one she'd determined the most likely to end up accidentally killing himself was the only surviving member of his team, and even his survival was questionable. It had been Naruto's actions that had allowed even one member of her team to make it this far but still, a part of herself that wanted to find someone to blame was turning against him.

Since the filthy Iwa Genin who had done this were dead, the vessel of the Demon Fox was as good a target as any. Why hadn't he taken point in the first place? He was the most obvious choice, since he was so good with traps.

As she was finding more reasons to blame Naruto for what had happened, a stray thought cut through her dark musings.

_Was this how it started?_ she thought.  _When the giant fox was gone and there was no-one left to blame but a newborn baby, was this how it started? The ones who had done this are gone, and here I am sitting here blaming the one who brought one of my students back alive, and brought the other two's bodies back so they could be buried instead of left to rot in a foreign country. I should have been blaming the ones responsible, not the one who brought little Hiro back but, here I am blaming him anyways._

After coming to that realization, she found herself feeling even worse for blaming the one whose actions left her with at least one of her students, the one who had carried the bodies of her other students for a night and half a day despite the fact that it would have been far more prudent to have left them behind to be retrieved later if at all. She really felt like a bitch, especially because the boy she had been blaming for the incident, since the culprits were dead and he was an easy target, had been blaming himself for the loss of two thirds of her team.

There was one thing that particularly worried her as well as the other Jounin about the boy who was tearing himself up over the deaths of her students, and that was that Naruto had been so upset over the deaths of her students that he'd drawn out so much of the Kyuubi's power so quickly that it had come out completely undiluted, and caused him to go berzerk. Who was to say that that the boy wouldn't become so upset that he draws out more than just power one day? The kid hadn't been taught how to deal with his emotions, and the way he seemed to deal with anger was to ignore it until it became too much, which was probably the most dangerous way to deal with such an emotion. This was partly the fault of Konoha as a whole, as virtually all of the villagers had been treating him like an outcast at best and a ticking time-bomb at worst.

As it turned out, they'd all been stomping on a fucking landmine all this time without even realizing it.

When they got back to Konoha, she was going to make damn sure that if such a thing happened again, it would be while the boy was pointed at the enemy, not while he was in the village or amongst comrades. The death of a comrade had been the first trigger, who knew what the second would be...

* * *

Sanbashi Mizuko had been understandably surprised to find the Jinchuriki he'd been looking for sitting quietly in the waiting room of the local hospital when he went to interview the medics who had treated a trio of Konoha Genin who had injuries that were consistent with the explosion that he'd investigated the day before. He should have known that this would have been the case though, considering the markings on the child's face. All Jinchuriki had some such oddity that marked them as containers of a Biju. The pupil-less pink eyes that looked like a Dojutsu were the Mizukage's.

"Should've guessed it was him," Kampachi said. "I knew there was something off about him when I first saw him but, I thought it had something to do with the fact that the kid was standing outside of the home of someone who was suspected of collaborating with Momochi."

"I just remembered something the kid said when that girl he was eating ramen with on the first day we saw him went fishing for a compliment." he said, after thinking back on everything he knew about the kid. "Do you think his parents really died protecting him from the Kyuubi, considering...?"

"Died to protect him from the Yondaime Hokage more like." Kampachi replied.

* * *

After the two Kirigakure Jounin had come to their conclusion, time passed as it always does, and Naruto kept his vigil at the hospital while it did. While he waited for Kurosaki and his teammates to become well enough to travel, he kept himself occupied by chatting with the doctors and nurses, and visiting all of the patients, even people he didn't know. His cheerful presence brightened the days of many, and darkened the days of the few who saw him as an annoyance. Eventually, the day he was waiting for had finally come, and Kurosaki and the Kami Twins were well enough to be sent home, even with the mountain hike taken into account.

All too soon, all of them were on the boat home. While they all looked forward to their return to Konoha, they also dreaded it. Yamaguchi and Fugiwara's deaths had really begun to sink in on the trip back, as well as the fact that Kurosaki and the Kami Twins would soon be facing a Konoha that didn't have two of their friends in it.

* * *

In Konoha, the Hokage sighed as he looked down at the form he'd received via courier. The lots for the locations of this cycle's Chunin Exams had been drawn, and the Summer Exams would be taking place in Iwa. There was no way in hell that he would be letting Naruto get within fifty miles of that place before he was a Jounin, even if he didn't take the boy's recent actions in Kiri into account. Naruto would of course be disappointed to learn that he wouldn't be taking the Exams with his team this Summer but, there was always Suna in January.


	10. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto has returned home from the Chunin Exams which had gone about as bad as they could go without there being an invasion to boot.

Standing by the main village gate, Naruto smiled sadly and waved as his teammates headed off to the Chunin Exams in Iwa. He was sad and disappointed that he wasn't going, with them and would really miss them while they were gone. But, as Old Man Hokage explained, this was probably Kurosaki's last chance to become a Chunin, probably even Kurosaki's last chance to remain a ninja, and he understood. So, while it pained him to do so, he had allowed Kurosaki to take his place on the team while they took the Exams this time.

Morishita-san had let Kurosaki go several months earlier because, she hadn't been ready to deal with the extra students she would have had to take on to balance out the team, and because Kurosaki had been a reminder of what she had lost. Kurosaki's team had been Morishita-san's first time training Genin, which made the loss all that much more painful because, she hadn't yet learned to not get too attached to them. Fujiwara's and Yamaguchi's deaths had hit Morishita-san hard, and she hadn't been doing too well since it happened. If she hadn't chosen to fixate on him for some strange reason, it was quite likely that Morishita-san would be dead by now as well.

After Morishita-san had dismissed him, Kurosaki hadn't gotten on with any of his new teams, and had been transferred three times in the last five months, even being placed on a rookie team from the Spring cycle that had graduated in April. If he didn't pass the Chunin Exams now, it was quite possible that he could be let go from the ranks, as he had gained a somewhat unearned reputation of being disruptive to any team he worked with. Kurosaki got on with Naruto's teammates okay since they were friends however so, there was still a chance that they would pass this time, even though they were extremely wary of taking the Exams again, considering what had happened last time.

He himself could always pass the Chunin Exams next time they came around - which would be Suna in January - but still...He had wanted to take the Exams to prove to everyone that he had what it took to be a Chunin, and...and to prove to himself that he could do it, prove to himself that he could handle taking the test again without turning into a nervous or paranoid wreck, or worse, losing it so badly that he ends up coming to standing over bloody corpses of either enemies or comrades with absolutely no memory of how it had happened.

After his team finally vanished in the distance, he turned away from the gate and walked back into the village proper. He passed by Konohamaru's hiding spot without a word as he headed to his favorite swing in the tree by the Academy where he planned on waiting for Iruka-sensei to get off work. He didn't know why the Hokage's grandson followed him around like he was his personal hero or something. He'd just smacked the kid for nearly getting himself killed, and if the Hokage had been a half second slower when he'd reacted to something he'd perceived to be a threat that day, he would have been short one grandson. Most of the time, the attention was somewhat flattering even if he felt it was undeserved but, right now he wasn't in the mood for it or any of the games of Ninja or any of the other games or activities that came with it.

Eventually, he arrived at the Academy, and when he reached the tree with his swing on it, he measured himself against the mark that Iruka-sensei had made when he was eight. He still had a long way to go until he reached that mark, and he knew full well that the road to his goal would be paved with innumerable difficulties but, that still didn't mean that he would give up before he goth there. He had sworn long ago that he would become Hokage, and he never went back on his word.

* * *

Konohamaru watched as the boss passed him by without a word. Naruto was in one of his moods again, and he's reasonably certain that it was because of the boy who went to the Chunin Exams with his team instead him of this time. The boss had started to tell him the story about what happened once before but, before he got too far into it, he suddenly clammed up and refused to say any more. The boy who had gone to the Chunin Exams instead of Naruto had somehow lost two teammates in Kiri, and Naruto had been there to see what happened.

When he had first met the boss, he had only just gotten back to Konoha, and had only just started recovering from what had happened during the Exams, and had been exceedingly overprotective of the people he cared about...

_It had been one of those days when Ebisu was more boring than usual, and so, he had decided to run away from the man's droning lecture. After making his escape, he had gone over to the Administration complex to make his usual attack on Grandpa. Unlike every other time where Grandpa would either sigh and lecture him, or simply pat him on the head and hand him off to a frantic Ebisu who would then lecture him about why attacking the Hokage was wrong, he found himself being slammed to the ground before he could even get within six feet of his grandfather. When he looked up to see who had done this, he found himself looking into a pair of cold, merciless blue eyes._

_The eyes he'd found himself looking into turned out to belong to a blond haired boy with whisker marks on his cheeks who was wearing a dark orange and brown jacket. He barely noticed any of that however, as his attention was focused on the very real and very sharp kunai that was held tightly clenched in the boy's fist. A kunai that hadn't been jabbed into one of his vital organs or slid across his throat because his grandfather was holding the boy's wrist, preventing the boy from doing so._

_"It's okay Naruto." Grandpa said in a soothing tone that was clearly meant to calm the boy down. "You can let it go. It's just my grandson Konohamaru. He wasn't really trying to hurt me."_

_Eventually, the blond boy released his hold on the kunai which his grandfather then took, and let him up. When he got up, the older boy slapped him across the face._

_"What the hell did you go and do a fucking stupid thing like that for?" the boy yelled at him. "You could have gotten yourself killed!"_

_The boy had hit him. Nobody had dared hit him before, nobody. And, nobody had deemed him enough of a threat to warrant attacking him before when he attacked Grandpa either..._

Since then, when he caught Naruto when he was in a good mood, the boss played with him, and taught him stuff, and they had fun together as they went on a number of adventures. When the boss was in his other mood however, he knew to give him space and wait for him to be happy again.

* * *

Sasuke scowled as he passed the Uzumaki boy, who was sitting in the swing near the Academy as if he belonged there, when classes let out for the day. The Idiot was still wearing that stupid hitai-ate as if he believed he were a ninja, and amazingly enough, people still let him get away with it for some reason. There was no way in hell that the Uzumaki could have become a ninja before him. If anyone was going to be graduating the Academy early, it would have been him.

Iruka had countermanded his entry into the Academy Graduation Exam when he'd signed himself up for it at the end of last year, saying that he was not yet ready. And, that went to further prove that it was completely impossible for the Uzumaki to have graduated because, if he, who was at the top of his class and shoo-in for Rookiee of the Year was not ready to graduate, then there was no way in hell that an idiot who had been at the bottom of his class before he dropped out could have been ready to graduate over a year and a half ago, or could ever be.

Deciding to ignore the moron, who would undoubtedly try to pick a fight with him if he said anything to him, because he had better things to do that fighting idiots who couldn't hack it at the Academy, he made his way back to the Uchiha district to train so he could grow strong enough to defeat That Man. The lessons at the Academy were far too easy, and low level for his tastes, and he needed to get stronger faster, so he could kill That Man and avenge his clan. The bastard was still out there, and he wasn't going to drop dead without his help.

* * *

As Ino departed from the Academy, she turned to see what Sasuke-kun had looked at before he left. It was Naruto. She didn't know why Sasuke pretended that Naruto had dropped out of the Academy but, since she was going to be the future Mrs. Uchiha, she had to pretend that he'd dropped out of the Academy as well. Deciding to ignore the Uzumaki, she turned her attention back to her Sasuke-kun who was far more important, and who was leaving...

With a cry of "Sasuke-kun, wait!", she raced after Sasuke whose back was receding in the distance.

* * *

As he made his way across the Academy grounds, Shikamaru briefly studied Naruto. That boy was a puzzle, and a rather difficult one to solve at that. One thing he could never do, was leave a puzzle unsolved. They had a tendency to bother him until he finally turned his focus on them and solved them just so he could finally relax without the puzzle in question constantly occupying his thoughts and ruining what would otherwise be a good day.

When the Uzumaki boy had been a student at the Academy, he had been held up as a prime example of an idiot and acted as such though, admittedly, on further reflection, a number of the pranks the Uzumaki boy had pulled had required a great deal of planning and covert effort on the Uzumaki's part. The fact that he'd managed to catch Chunin who knew to be wary of such things in even his most basic pranks also hinted at a higher level of skill than the one the teachers would admit to. But still, the boy's standard skill set and test scores while he'd been at the Academy had been at the extremely low end of acceptable, and barely at that, and there had been no evidence that he'd been faking his lack of skill, or doing the minimum amount of work necessary to get by like he did.

Outside of the Academy however, the Uzumaki boy had become something else entirely. He had defied all expectation, and become a capable shinobi in his own right. Not only that but, outside the Academy, the boy was rarely, if ever, called an idiot, and was hailed for his skill.

How had this happened? By all accounts, the boy who had been at the bottom of their class, and had not been ready to graduate according to current standards, should have been an absolute failure in the field.

In one word, Naruto was

"Troublesome."

* * *

When Chouji heard Shikamaru's mutter of "Troublesome" he turned to see what his friend was looking at. Quite often, things Shikamaru found to be "Troublesome" were interesting in his book. As it turned out, Shikamaru had been looking at Naruto, who was hanging around on the swing for some reason, probably waiting for Umino-sensei to get out, since he'd seen them talking a few times before. To be honest, he probably would have completely forgotten about the boy despite the amusing pranks he used to pull, if his dad didn't bring him up a great deal.

When his dad mentioned something Naruto had done, he would often refer to him as the "Little Thief", and he had often wondered what it was the boy had stolen because, when Naruto was in the Academy he never took things that didn't belong to him unless doing so was part of a prank. At first, he had thought it was the hitai-ate that Naruto had been seen wearing around town since he'd heard from several of his classmates that Naruto wasn't really a ninja but, he rather quickly learned that was not the case, as his father had used the words "Genin" and "Uzumaki" in the same sentence without the words "is not a" between them on a more than a few occasions, most often in the query "Why are you not a Genin like Uzumaki?".

He had once heard his dad and Shikamaru's dad talking about something that Naruto had done during the Chunin Exams a few months back but, he didn't hear exactly what it was that had supposedly happened because, he'd been discovered and sent off to do chores before his and Shikamaru's father's resumed their conversation. Whatever it had been that Naruto had done, it had been big. Now, when his dad talked about the "Little Thief" there was a tone of admiration in the man's voice that was usually reserved for people like the Yondaime, and it made him jealous.

Trying to see what it had been about Naruto that had caught Shikamaru's attention, he watched the boy for about a minute. He wasn't doing anything interesting though, just sitting in the swing like he used to do when he was feeling depressed back when he was still an Academy student. Boring.

Shrugging, he turned and continued on his way back home where his mother undoubtedly had his afternoon snack waiting for him.

* * *

"Naruto-kun." Hinata sighed from her hiding spot which had a good view of the boy in question.

She had admired Naruto for years, ever since that day Naruto had brushed off the ridicule of the entire class and kept trying despite the fact that he kept failing as well. He had something she could never have, even though she tried and tried and tried. Despite the incredible adversity he had gone through, Naruto had never retreated. Whenever life knocked him down, he got back up and started climbing even higher.

She wished she could be like him, then she wouldn't be such a disappointment to her father and her clan. At the very least though, she could always be there for Naruto, even if he didn't notice her.

* * *

When Hibachi noticed where his friends were headed, he steered them away from Naruto. He could tell that the other boy was in no mood to talk. His friends looked like they wanted to go over and speak with him, probably so they could say that they had. Naruto was something of a notorious figure in the class, and much of the rest of the Academy for that matter, and not just because of the pranks of his which had become legendary in the year and a half since he left.

He knew that he'd royally screwed up when it came to Naruto. He had had a chance to have him in his group a few years back, and he totally blew it. Now, based on what he heard his dad say to his friends, Naruto was some big hero, and if anyone ever asked him about him, all he would be able to say was that he'd constantly rejected him, and once even tried to trick him into getting himself killed by enemy ninja while he was still at the Academy.

There wasn't much he could do for Naruto now but, maybe he could give him some space right now, and defend him when Sasuke and his fanclub were on one of their "Naruto is a dropout not a ninja." kicks, instead of remaining silent like everyone else usually did in order to not antagonize the Uchiha later.

* * *

Sakura growled when she saw Naruto sitting in the swing, still wearing that stupid headband as if he were a ninja. There was no way that Naruto could have become a ninja before Sasuke-kun. Sasuke-kun was completely awesome, and the best of the best, and if Umino-sensei said that he wasn't ready to graduate just yet, then that meant that the dropout who was still rather pathetically pretending to be a ninja most definitely hadn't been.

Upset over the fact that Naruto had dared to cheapen the sacrifices that real shinobi made for the village every day by wearing that hitai-ate as if he had a right to, she decided to give Naruto a piece of her mind with her fists. So, instead of chasing after Ino-pig and Sasuke-kun who had already disappeared into the distance by the time she'd gotten out the door, she turned in the Uzumaki's direction, stomped over to the boy, swung her fist at his head, and...

Found herself lying pinned on the ground face-first with her arm pulled up behind her back and someone sitting on top of her.

"I might have let you get away with that while I was at the Academy because I liked you but, I'm not going to let you take advantage of my kindness in such a manner again." The person sitting on her back said.

"Allowing myself to be abused in such a manner is not behavior befitting a shinobi. Despite the fact that I am loathe to do so since you already attacked me, I'm going to let you up. If you try to hit me again however, I'll break your arm. Before you even think about testing this, I'm going to warn you right now that I'm not going to go easy on you because you're a girl, since that's just a bit of civilian nonsense and I've learned the hard way that girls are just as dangerous as, if not moreso than, boys. If you think anyone will make a fuss over me breaking your arm...Well, let's just say that you don't want to be there when they learn that the reason your arm was broken was because you were suicidally stupid enough to try and attack a ninja." the person who was kneeling on her back said as he released her arm and got off of her.

When she got up, she found herself facing Naruto and shivering as she looked down into a pair of cold blue eyes. Despite knowing that it was just Naruto, and that it was a cowardly act to do so, she ran.

* * *

Iruka smiled sadly as he watched the exchange between Naruto and Sakura from his spot by the Academy doors. It was quite obvious that the boy still hadn't recovered from his ordeal during the Chunin Exams. The boy had better control over his reactions to perceived threats though, especially considering the fact that, shortly after he returned from Kiri, Naruto had nearly killed the Honorable Grandson when the child had made one of his daily "attacks" against the Hokage in his presence.

Trauma combined with shinobi training often had dangerous and sometimes tragic results. Watching fellow ninja, or any person for that matter, being killed right in front of you was...There were no words for what it was. What Naruto had gone through though was several magnitudes worse than merely watching someone die in front of him, and it was amazing that the boy hadn't developed some very serious problems or dropped out of the ranks altogether like many Genin who had experienced something similar had done.

He understood exactly where Naruto was coming from, having been there himself at one point. There had been a reason that he'd requested to be transferred to the Academy, and it wasn't just because he'd almost gotten himself and his teammates killed because of his kindness and misplaced sympathy for the enemy.

"So, how would you like to get some ramen?" he asked when he walked over to the boy after Sakura had run off.

The bright smile he got was all the answer he needed, and it warmed his heart to see it. Naruto had just been drifting along for a while but now, it was obvious to him that the boy was well on his way down the road to recovery. Naruto would eventually be able to get past what he'd gone through for the most part one day, just as he had.


	11. Pranks and Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A retalitory prank on the Hokage goes awry when Naruto discovers a would-be thief.

Naruto felt a slight pang of jealousy as he greeted the three newly minted Chunin who had just returned from Iwa almost two months after they had departed as Genin. If he'd been given the chance, one of those three could have been him. He didn't begrudge Kurosaki his new status however. The other boy deserved it, and now that Kurosaki was a Chunin, he wouldn't be stuck with a team of little nosy parkers who went prying into things that didn't concern them like that Rookie Spring lot did when Kurosaki had been placed on a team that had graduated in April. Without being stuck with Genin he couldn't work with for a variety of reasons, there was a good chance that his teammates' friend and former classmate wouldn't be dropped from the shinobi ranks as he would otherwise have been.

"Congratulations you guys!" he yelled when they finally reached where he'd been waiting by the village gates, honestly happy for his now quite possibly former teammates and Kurosaki, even if he was also the slightest bit jealous.

"Thanks!" Suzume said as she pulled him into a tight hug that left marks from the pockets on her new vest on his forehead.

"Don't worry Naruto, we won't forget about you now that we're Chunin." Satoshi said as he ruffled his hair.

Despite the fact that he hadn't cared for it all that much, Satoshi had always been able to do that, because he had always been larger and stronger than him, even before he'd hit that growth spurt. Looking at him now, he could swear that the older boy had grown at least another three centimeters in the two months since he'd left for the Exams.

"Thank you Naruto, I couldn't have done it without you." Kurosaki said, shaking his hand the instant his teammates had backed away a bit and given him room to do so.

When Tetsuo-sensei had dragged the new Chunin off to a local shinobi bar to celebrate their promotion, he joined them even though, as a Genin, he was only allowed non-alcoholic beverages. Satoshi slipped him something while Tetsuo-sensei wasn't looking or, more likely, pretending to be not looking, and he, Suzume, and Kurosaki had a good laugh over his expression after he got his first taste of alcohol. It wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be, and he honestly didn't know what the attraction was, since it tasted awful.

In the months that followed that day, it had pretty much been just him and Tetsuo-sensei, as his Chunin teammates had signed up for the more lucrative B Ranked missions that he wasn't allowed to go on as soon as they could and, since he was still a Genin, he couldn't be left to his own devices. Eventually, things settled into a bit of a routine as he and Tetsuo-sensei got used to being alone together. Until the Hokage had dropped a bombshell at the beginning of October that was.

Despite his and Tetsuo-sensei's numerous protests, when the Autumn class graduated at the end of the month, he was to be placed on a new team and given a new sensei. Apparently, one of the potential senseis had requested him, and the Hokage had seriously considered the request instead of telling the Jounin where they could shove it like he would usually have done. Breaking a team apart in this manner was just not done, even if the team had mostly broken up because of Suzume's and Satoshi's promotions. The Hokage hadn't needed to do this because, Tetsuo-sensei could have asked for a pair of new graduates to fill out the team roster if the fact that he was alone on the team was so much of an issue.

There was another fact aside from that he was being taken from Tetsuo-sensei that made this change in team doubly suck. The Academy had two classes for each year, Spring and Autumn, and both classes let out two months and change before the Chunin Exams for some reason. Since no sensei was dumb enough to even think about trying to nominate thier students for the exams that took place two months and someodd days after their graduation after what happened to the only one who had been dumb enough to do so, that meant that if a Sensei was dumb enough to nominate a bunch of rookies for the Chunin Exams, they would have about eight months of training under their belts before they took the Exams. What this boiled down to for Naruto was that, if the new team he was placed on passed both parts of the Graduation Exam, he would be missing the Winter Chunin Exams in Suna, and quite possibly missing the Summer Exams which were to take place in a location that was as yet to be determined as well.

He was naturally rather miffed about this little fact, especially since the chance of a field promotion was practically nil during peacetime.

At the end of October, much to Naruto's ire, he was sent a set of orders that confirmed the fact that the other two members of his new team had passed the first part of the Academy Graduation Exam, and that he was to report to the Academy in a few days time to join the new Team 7 and meet his new instructor, one chronically tardy Hatake Kakashi. He hadn't gotten further than his new sensei's name before he crumpled said orders and burned them, not bothering to read the names of his new teammates.

While Kakashi wasn't the worst of the Jounin he had met, he wasn't the one he would have picked considering the fact that the man always kept everyone waiting for hours. Despite the title he would now have to call the man by, Kakashi certainly wasn't his sensei, even though he had gone out of his way to teach him things sometimes. He liked Kakashi but, he wasn't sure about how he'd felt about the man now that he'd convinced the Hokage to take him away from Tetsuo-sensei and give him to him instead.

When it came to his teammates, he just hoped he didn't get Sasuke or Hibachi on his team. Sasuke had constantly frustrated him with his perfection at just about everything he did, and turned himself into something approaching an enemy when he had refused to acknowledge the one accomplishment that he had managed to make before the jerk could. Despite the fact that it may seem so, he wasn't ignorant of what Sasuke had been saying about him at the Academy, as he'd have to be incredibly dim witted not to notice something like that for nearly two years, he just chose to ignore it. When it came to Hibachi...Well, Hibachi had once sent him into a death trap while pretending to be his friend, and was therefore definitely not the sort of person he wanted watching his back on missions.

Despite the fact that it was somewhat juvenile of him, he decided to express his displeasure at the orders he'd received that afternoon by pranking the Hokage. He still occasionally pranked people to keep his skills sharp while in the village but, after he'd made Genin, he had never pulled one on the Hokage, having taken his role as a shinobi of the Leaf seriously. The Old Man's two year reprieve was at an end however, and tonight the old man was going to learn this little fact the hard way.

It had been nearly midnight when he finally snuck into the Tower to pull his prank. Getting in had been easy since Konohamaru had left his goddamn window open again. No matter how many times he'd told the boy, he never learned. Apparently, despite the dangers of doing so, the kid couldn't sleep at night unless he had "fresh air", even if that meant that he had to cover himself with half a dozen blankets to keep warm. The instant he was inside Konohamaru's room, he closed the window with a sharp snap, waking the boy who had been huddled under at least six blankets.

He swiftly covered Konohamaru's mouth before the boy could make a noise that would alert one of the Tower Guards.

"What did I tell you about the window?" he hissed to the boy who had the decency to look slightly guilty. "You're lucky it was me and not an assassin. One of these days, you're not going to wake up at all. Now keep quiet, I'm off to prank your grandfather."

With that said, he left the room, hoping the evil grin on the small boy's face was for the idea of his grandfather being pranked, rather than the fact that he planned on say alerting the guards to his presence for instance. As it turned out, the elderly Hokage had been on the toilet when he reached the Old Man's room, which gave him a chance to shortsheet the old man's bed and put some goop on his bedroom door handle. The main part of the prank however was going to take place in the Hokage's private office which he and several Kage Bunshin would be repainting in a most creative manner.

As he made his way to the Hokage's private office/study, he could have sworn that he heard a noise coming from the vault that the Hokage kept his most valuable scrolls in. Curious, he decided to investigate...

* * *

Mizuki whirled around to face the person who had opened the door to the scroll vault that he was currently robbing, prepared to fight his way out with his prize, which he would be presenting to Orochimaru in exchange for the rank of Jounin in Otogakure. The person who had opened the door and caught him in the act wasn't a guard or the Hokage however. It was the Kyuubi's vessel who most clearly did not belong, since the boy had not immediately summoned the guards, making it apparent that his nocturnal activities in the tower were illicit as well.

He quickly came up with a plan as he stood there waiting for the Demon brat to make a move. He'd need a fallguy whom the theft could be blamed on afterall, and who better to blame than the Demon child?

He knew his plan would work because, what better way was there to win the Demon over to his side than to reveal that he had been betrayed, and make him want revenge? In every tale he'd heard about demons throughout his childhood, they had all sought revenge against those who they believed had wronged them. The hero had always defeated the demon in the end however, and in this case, he was the hero.

"Do you know why everyone in the village hates you Naruto?" he whispered to the boy who had stood there and stared at him with a look of disbelief on his face for the several seconds it had taken him to come up with his ingenious plan.

"Huh?" the brat said blankly, wearing that stupid look he remembered from his early days as an Assistant Instructor on his face.

"Twelve years ago, the Hokage made a law. A law that stated that if anyone told you why they hated you, they'd be executed. Because of that law, everyone's been lying to you, even your precious Hokage, since the day you were born." he continued in a dramatic whisper.

"Dude, you're in enough trouble as it is, if you could get executed for telling me, you really shouldn't..." the Demon brat hissed in a desperate whisper.

"Twelve years ago, the Yondaime didn't kill the Kyuubi." he said, interrupting the Demon child's weak protests. "He sealed it into a baby. He sealed it into you. You are the Demon Fox, and that's why everybody hates you. It was because of you that so many people died, including your  _friend_ Iruka's parents!"

The Demon child looked stunned. Good. Now that he was off balance, it was time to go for the kill.

"If you help me get out of here, I'll take you to a place where you'll be accepted, a place from which you can plan your revenge on those who kept you down and spat on you!" he said, confident that his escape with the Forbidden scroll was assured.

* * *

Two years ago, that little psychological attack would have been more devastating, and possibly even effective, now however...

Naruto knew that not everyone hated him. Sure, the civilians were still a pain in the ass, but he had earned the respect of his fellow ninja, and he even had friends. He also knew enough about sealing to know that something had been sealed inside him, and that it had quite likely been the thing that had caused the blackout or rather redout during the Kiri Chunin Exams based on the whispers and handsigns between the Jounin. He hadn't known that it was the Kyuubi itself though but, it made sense considering the fact that the date of his birth coincided with the Kyuubi's attack. He also knew enough about sealing to know that he wasn't the thing that was sealed inside him just the way a scroll wasn't a kunai, or a box of diapers or whatever.

The thing that upset him the most about the Chunin's revelation was not the fact that something that big had been hidden from him all of his life, as such things sometimes happened to people in the shinobi world without anyone really being the wiser but, that the vaguely familiar man in front of him had asked him to betray Konoha, and fully expected him to do so. Bastard.

A slightly evil smirk that anyone who had been on the wrong side of one of Naruto's pranks would recognize was all the warning the silver haired jerk got.

"Hey! There's someone stealing scrolls in here!" he yelled, hopefully getting the attention of the Hokage's guards who were apparently asleep on the job.

The man was quick, but not quick enough. A Kawarimi put him out of the man's reach, and a dozen Kage Bunshin added to the confusion. He was pretty sure that the man would be caught soon, since the man would have a hard time fleeing with the severed Achilles tendon he'd received compliments of an over-eager clone. Most of the weapons the man had on him aside from the standard Kunai hadn't been meant close-quarters combat, and had been more of a hindrance than a help in this instance.

* * *

The Hokage groaned tiredly as he ushered the Uzumaki boy into his private office. He hadn't planned on having this conversation with Naruto until the boy was much older, and he certainly hadn't planned on having it in the middle of the night, especially after a major disruption like the one that had disturbed him from his musings on who could have shortsheeted his bed and why. Considering Naruto's presence, he was reasonably certain he had the answer.

As soon as he was seated at his desk, he invited the boy to ask him anything with the caveat that he wouldn't answer the boy if he felt that the child wasn't ready for the information, or if the answer to the question involved information that could compromise someone else or the village's safety.

"Did my parents really die protecting me from the Kyuubi?" Naruto asked.

He had given Naruto that little bit of information when the boy had come asking about his parents after his sensei had mentioned his mother's name and the fact that he'd known her nearly two years ago. He just knew that it would come back and bite him in the ass when he'd given it, and now it was.

"Yes." he replied. "The Kyuubi attempted to attack you before it was sealed away, and though she was gravely injured, your mother managed to chain it down until it was sealed. Your father died soon after of injuries that had been acquired during the attack."

"Why...?" Naruto asked, apparently stunned by this revelation.

He could see several questions in the boy's eyes. Why had his father been injured? Why had his mother protected him if she was going to allow a Demon Fox be sealed within him? Why had had his mother allowed the Fox to be sealed within him in the first place? He wasn't sure how or if he should answer these questions right now. He had planned on telling Naruto everything when he either made Jounin or turned 18, whichever came first, and had a letter for the boy that was only to be delivered to him under those conditions on it in case he died before he could tell him.

While he could not risk parting with what, in his opinion, was the most dangerous secret for Naruto, he could risk parting with one secret that he would never have even considered parting with if he hadn't believed that Naruto would be able to handle it right now.

"Your mother was the Kyuubi's previous host, having taken the position from the Shodai Hokage's wife who was dying of old age." he replied, carefully gauging the boy's reaction to this.

"On the day you were born, someone had found a way to free the Kyuubi from her body and turn it against the village. She had barely survived the extraction process and was dying as a result of it, and knew that the only way for you and the rest of the village to be safe would be for the Kyuubi to be sealed in another person. She and the Yondaime entrusted you with it and therefor the safety of the village as well. She loved you very much, and believed that you would be up to the task." he continued before the boy's shock at this could turn into something more dangerous.

"The Yondaime had wanted you to be seen as a hero but, people were hurting and grieving at the time and had been looking for someone to blame. Some people are often blind to what is right in front of their faces, and I or nobody else for that matter can force them to see what's really there." he said sadly, remembering those early days when he'd been forced to pass that law so Naruto might possibly have comrades he could live and work with in the future as shinobi from generations prior to his would have been exceedingly reluctant to accept him at best. "They will either have to come to see you for the hero that you are on their own, or not at all."

There were tears in Naruto's eyes at this, and as he did his best to break the mood by telling the boy a story about his mother's days in the Academy, and her frustration over a rather unfortunate nickname she'd been given before he sent him home but still, he had managed to get a smile out of the boy before he departed. That smile gave him cause to hope. Naruto was resilient, and had recovered from so much already. After seeing that smile, he knew that the boy would be able to recover from this as well.

* * *

Naruto walked slowly and on the ground on his way home, detouring past the KIA monument as he sometimes did, as he had a great deal to think about as he made his way across the village to his apartment. One fact stood out in his mind however. When they had sealed the Kyuubi into him, both his mother and the Yondaime had trusted him to keep Konoha safe.

As he looked at his mother's name on the KIA memorial, which most people's eyes tended to graze over because it was right below the Yondaime's, he quietly swore that he would not let his mother down. He would do everything in his power to keep Konoha and the villagers safe, even though most of the villagers didn't like him all that much, and he didn't like them all that much either. His mother had trusted him, and was counting on him.

* * *

Morishita Kinako rested her head against the bar, gazing into the clear depths of a glass of some foreign drink whose name she couldn't pronounce in her current state of drunkenness. She'd spent a great deal of time here since she'd lost her team, trying to forget the pain, and trying to forget that she'd once had Genin training under her altogether. She was rather startled when Tetsuo sat down next to her and ordered a drink. He never came in this late, or early rather, especially since his daughter had been born.

"What're you doing here?" she asked.

"There was an incident with Naruto." Tetsuo replied as his drink arrived. "He stopped a robbery in progress while he was at the tower to prank the Hokage."

"You don't sound to happy about that." she said. "Are you still upset at him for giving Naruto to Kakashi as a bribe to get him to pass a team?"

She took Tetsuo's dark look to be an affirmative. Despite the fact that the man hadn't initially cared for Naruto, he had become rather fond of the boy over the past two years, and had been exceedingly upset to learn that the boy was being taken from him. That kid could grow on anybody, herself included.


	12. The New Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first meeting of Team 7.

Iruka sighed as he called the class to order. Mizuki should have been here, but he was currently entertaining the T&I department because he had been caught trying to steal something by Naruto, who had snuck into the Hokage's residence to prank the Hokage, and had rather stupidly compounded his mistake by breaking a certain law that had been made shortly after Naruto's birth. Fortunately, the Hokage had been awake at the time, and had been able to defuse the situation after Naruto had incapacitated his wayward friend.

Eventually, the class came to order, and he made his version of the standard graduation speech even though he knew he'd be seeing most of the class back here come January - if they didn't drop out of the Ninja Program entirely - before he started calling out the team assignments. When he got to the middle of the roster, he reached the one that had caught his interest when he had noticed it earlier. Such things had happened before, but usually in times of war. What usually happened when there were an odd number of graduates was that the spare or spares were sent out to fill gaps on already existing teams.

"Team Seven will be rather different this year, as there was an uneven number of graduates. Uchiha Sasuke, and Haruno Sakura, you will be assigned with an already established Genin, and your sensei will be Hatake Kakashi." he said with a slight smirk, deciding to let the identity of said Genin be a rather unpleasant surprise after all of the things those two had said about Naruto over the past two years.

He was still a bit of a prankster when the situation called for it.

* * *

Naruto grumbled over the fact that he would have to show up on time despite the fact that he knew that his new sensei was going to be at least two hours late as he made his way to the classroom where he was supposed to be meeting his teammates and being picked up by the man. One of the reasons he hadn't dared to turn up late was because he'd heard the story of what had happened to the man who'd decided to show up according to "Kakashi Time" only to find a rather annoyed and somewhat irate Hatake Kakashi who had actually turned up on time for once in his life waiting for him. He didn't want to risk it, since it wasn't worth the probable consequences.

Fortunately, he had thought ahead and brought some entertainment in the form of a book, a deck of cards in case his teammates were in the mood for playing, and his standard Jounin grade Prank Pack. The man fully deserved to be pranked for taking him away from Tetsuo-sensei.

Shortly before Jounin who'd been behind him had arrived order to take their teams, he walked into the room which was crowded with a batch of recent "graduates" and sat down, ignoring the strange stares he was receiving. Long ago, when he'd attended the Academy, this had been his classroom for more than a year. He guessed that was supposed to be feeling nostalgic by being here, but he wasn't. The closest he got to feeling anything approaching nostalgia upon his arrival had been when he'd seen Iruka-sensei standing at the front of the room. As he looked around, he wondered which two of these students would be on his team, as he hadn't asked for a new copy of his orders to replace the one he'd destroyed before he'd reached the names of his future teammates. Once upon a time, these had been his classmates, and honestly, he'd forgotten most of them. He remembered Shikamaru, Chouji, Kiba and his dog, Sakura, and the bastard Sasuke, but that was about it, aside from the Hyuuga girl that he'd noticed following him around when he was in the village.

One brave soul, an orange haired girl whom he vaguely thought he recognized as being one of the pack of Sasuke's followers, finally made her way over to him.

"What are you doing here?" the girl asked in a dismissive manner.

"I got assigned to Team 7." he replied, still slightly sore about the assignment because, it meant that he would most likely have to wait at least a year to take the Chunin Exams again. If he missed taking the Exams too often, he'd start looking as bad as Yakushi Kabuto whom he'd been informed by his former teammates had failed again making it a grand total of six times.

Several members of the group of "graduates" gave the Uchiha some rather odd glances after he said this, as if they thought he would start foaming at the mouth or explode or something along those lines. Considering how the bastard had been talking about him being an Academy dropout for the last two years, he had a feeling he knew why. The Uchiha was ignoring them in favor of staring at him like he were an alien or something however.

All too soon, the group of Jounin that he'd entered the Academy ahead of arrived, much like they had when he had graduated two years earlier, and started calling for their teams. As he'd expected, Hatake Kakashi wasn't amongst them, and was most likely either sitting in a tree somewhere reading porn, or staring at the KIA Memorial like he'd once caught him doing one of the times he'd stopped by there himself sometime after he'd found out that his mother's name was on it.

Three by three, the Genin started vanishing and, as they did, several of his hopes went with them. He would have been willing to tolerate Shikamaru or Chouji who had vanished with Asuma-san when Team Ten was called. He would have also been able to tolerate Kiba, the bug boy and that quiet Hyuuga girl who constantly stalked him but, they'd gone when someone called for Team 8. Eventually, there were only five "Genin" left in the room and, from the looks of it, he'd either have Hibachi or the Uchiha bastard on his team. Great.

A shinobi he'd vaguely remembered seeing around the village called for Team 4 and Hibachi departed with the only girl in the room who wasn't Sakura and some boy whose name he couldn't recall for the life of him, which only left...

**OH HELL NO!**

Just for this, the Old Man was going to be getting the special poison ivy toilet paper he'd picked up in the Capitol during that C Rank where he'd accidentally ended up in the Daimyo's bathroom. It was bad enough that the irresponsible and perpetually tardy Hatake Kakashi was going to be his new sensei but, to be on a team with THEM, even if it was only for twenty-four hours, on top of that...

The next two hours he'd spent waiting for his new sensei were pure hell, and setting up the pranks for the man in question didn't even come close to beginning to make up for it. The Uchiha bastard had spent the entire time silently glaring at him as if he'd killed his puppy right in front of him, and then started on his family. The Haruno girl, who was no longer Sakura-chan to him. sat there staring at him as well but, her look and occasional whimpers told him that she expected him to attack her at any second as if he were some rabid animal or something.

After he'd finished setting up the pranks and settled down to wait, he found that he couldn't focus on his book with his new "teammates" staring at him like that so, he set got out his deck of cards and set up a game of Solitaire, which in his opinion had to be the most boring card game in the world. To make matters worse, Kakashi was a paranoid bastard who was well aware of his ability with traps, and evaded every last one of the damn things despite the chance that he'd thought he'd had a chance of catching him in at least one of them like he had done Tetsuo-sensei that one day.

Finally, after dodging the last flour bomb, Kakashi ordered the team to the roof. The instant this order had been given, he hopped out the window and ran up the side of the building but, still arrived several seconds behind Kakashi. He really had to learn how to do the Shunshin one of these days. Sasuke and Sakura arrived about a minute later, slightly out of breath from having run up several flights of stairs, and soon, they were seated in front of Kakashi in a manner he recognized from the Team 5 introduction two years before.

When Kakashi ordered them to introduce themselves, Sakura asked Kakashi to go first to show them how it was done. Complying with the Haruno girl's request, Kakashi then proceeded to give the standard "My name is (fill in the blank) and I'm not telling you crap." introduction. Based on the man's slightly perverted chuckle when he mentioned hobbies, he figured that they all had something to do either with sex or the more likely option of porn considering his well known loner tendencies and the book he always carried about, and therefore weren't fit for the virgin ears of Academy students. Since he was seated at the outside of the group, he was ordered to go first after Kakashi had finished his introduction.

"My name is Uzumaki Naruto." he said, deciding to go with the format of his Team 5 introduction. "My favorite foods are Ichiraku Ramen and Red Bean soup. My least favorite foods are vegetables. My hobbies are training, gardening, and pranking people. My dream for the future is to become Hokage."

That bastard Uchiha, who naturally went next because he was sitting in the middle, would be paying dearly for that dismissive snort later .

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke" the Uchiha bastard said after he'd finished his introduction. "I have a lot of dislikes, and there isn't anything I particularly like, and I don't have any hobbies...I won't categorize my ambition as a dream. My ambition is to restore my clan, and to kill a certain person."

Well, wasn't that disturbing. Based on what he'd heard, the counseling that the Uchiha was supposed to have been in hadn't been effective. He was pretty sure that he knew who the person that Sasuke wanted to kill was, and that person was one of the main reasons for the argument against early graduation, Uchiha Itachi. Itachi had become a Genin at seven, a Chunin at ten, an ANBU Captain at twelve, and a mass murderer at thirteen when he snapped and killed his entire clan barring himself and Sasuke.

Sakura was last, and he hoped that her introduction wasn't anywhere near half as disturbing as Sasuke's had been.

"My name is Haruno Sakura." the girl said. So far so good, but that was only her name.

"I like..." she said, before not so subtly glancing over at Sasuke and blushing.

"My hobbies are..." she said before looking at Sasuke again and blushing.

Seriously? With that, she'd just moved into the position of most likely to die first because, there was a good chance that Sasuke would either sacrifice her in battle so he wouldn't have to deal with her anymore or just kill her himself. At some point over the years, the Haruno girl had apparently crossed the line between fangirl and crazed stalker.

"My dream for the future is..." the girl said looking at Sasuke and blushing once more as she lost herself in a fantasy that most likely had her in a wedding dress or kimono, since he was pretty sure she wasn't old enough for the other type of fantasy he'd heard about from some of the older Genin.

His musings on the nature of the girl's fantasies were suddenly and violently interrupted when the girl gave out a most unholy ear-splitting squeal which had momentarily deafened him.

"What about your dislikes?" Kakashi asked, sounding almost as if he dreaded the answer.

"Naruto!" she promptly said loudly and emphatically.

Apparently he'd made something of an impression last time he saw her, and he wasn't all that fond of her anymore either, so it all worked out. He was somewhat amazed that she had had the courage to say that in front of him though, considering how she'd behaved earlier, and how she'd run off every time they'd run into each-other since that incident.

From the looks of things, he was going to have to do his best to sabotage whatever test Kakashi came up with tomorrow, otherwise it was going to be a looooooooong year.


End file.
